Popular Travel Apps Shared Detailed User Information With Facebook
Skift Take
What's clear from the report is that Facebook and some travel apps are sharing way more personal information than they had admitted to. The backlash will undoubtedly pick up steam, although Facebook seems to have largely escaped condemnation from this latest disclosure.
Travel apps such as Kayak, TripAdvisor, Skyscanner, and Yelp shared extensive user information from their Android apps with Facebook regardless whether or not consumers were Facebook members or were logged off from their accounts, a new privacy report found.
"A prime example is the travel search and price comparison app Kayak, which sends detailed information about people’s flight searches to Facebook, including: departure city, departure airport, departure date, arrival city, arrival airport, arrival date, number of tickets (including number of children), class of tickets (economy, business or first class)," reads the report from London-based Privacy International.
The organization labels the type of data the apps provided to Facebook, including the user's Google advertising ID in the case of Kayak and Skyscanner, as "personal data," some of which may arguably be processed in compliance with the new European privacy regulations, GDPR, for example.
However, Privacy International details how some of this data becomes personally identifiable, albeit indirectly.
