Facebook denies Sunday Times' 'disingenuous' allegations of spying on Android texts

London, Feb 28 (ANI): Facebook has denied using its free Android app to spy on text messages and other personal data sent from users of smartphones.

A recent report in The Sunday Times said the social networking giant had "admitted reading text messages" via its Android app.

But Facebook accused the Sunday newspaper of "creative conspiracy theorizing," The Telegraph reports.

The social networking firm countered that the terms and conditions of its app do grant it "read/write" permission to access texts, but pointed that the newspaper had misunderstood what this meant in the context of software.

It said the permission is designed to help Facebook to integrate its own communications services with texting, not to read or collect messages for targeting advertising.

"The Sunday Times has done some creative conspiracy theorizing but the suggestion that we're secretly reading people texts is ridiculous," the paper quoted a Facebook spokesman, as saying.

"Instead, the permission is clearly disclosed on the app page in the Android marketplace and is in anticipation of new features that enable users to integrate Facebook features with their reading and sending of texts," the spokesman said.

Facebook said it had been right to change its terms and conditions to grant access to texts, otherwise it could not do the development work.

Iain Mackenzie, Facebook's communications manager for Europe wrote in a blog post that The Sunday Times' "disingenuous" report was "a ludicrous attempt to cook-up a story about companies spying on users". (ANI)