Facebook saves links shared on Messenger and Instagram, and this new detail reveals it&8217;s on purpose

Facebook is storing the links you share on Messenger and in Instagram DMs. 

No, not just the URL itself, but the entire contents of the page you’re linking to.

In October, app developers Tommy Mysk and Talal Haj Bakry discovered a privacy and security risk on Facebook's private messaging platforms.

Whenever a user shared a link on Facebook Messenger or in a DM on Instagram and a link preview was generated, the data from that link was downloaded to the social media giant’s servers. According to Mysk and Bakry, this occurred even if the linked site contained many gigabytes of data.

“Facebook servers download the content of any link sent through Messenger or Instagram DMs,” write Mysk and Bakry in their report. “This could be bills, contracts, medical records, or anything that may be confidential.”  Read more...