Facebook lets 3rd-party vendors listen to your Messenger chats

San Francisco: After Google, Apple and Amazon, Facebook has become the latest tech giant who was paying third-party contractors to transcribe and listen to your conversations on its Messenger app.
“Much like Apple and Google, we paused human review of audio more than a week ago,” a Facebook spokesperson told CNET late Tuesday.
Earlier, Bloomberg reported on the existence of such Facebook programme. The contractors had no knowledge of where the audio was being recorded or how it was obtained.
Since 2015, Facebook Messenger has offered a feature to transcribe voice clips to text, although it is turned off by default.
“Facebook reportedly said affected users had selected the option to have their voice chats transcribed in their Messenger settings, and added that the data associated with the recordings was anonymized before being listened to by contractors,” said the report.
Apple, Google and Amazon recently suspended human review of user audio recordings after reports said the companies used third-party contractors to listen users’ voice recordings.