Video-conferencing app Zoom is gaining popularity as almost the whole world is social-distancing or forced to work from home. The app is available for Android and iOS and is offered for free, providing options for video conferencing, webinars and online conferences. However, its privacy on iOS appears to have an issue.Vice reports that a recent analysis of the app has brought to light the fact that the Zoom iOS app is sharing data with Facebook. The interesting part is that the app sends information to the tech giant even if you don’t have a Facebook account and there is, at least at the moment, no mention of this in Zoom’s privacy policy, analysts state. When you open the app, it connects to Facebook’s application programming interface, which is usually the main method used by Facebook’s developers to get data in and out of the platform. Additionally, on the backend, Zoom is using Facebook’s software development kits (SDKs).

It’s a standard practice for some apps to use Facebook’s SDKs, as they allow an app to have a wide array of features more easily (without developers having to code everything from the ground up). In this scenario, apps may send data to Facebook and this is no secret.

Facebook requires apps that use its SDKs to make sure to provide notice to their users, informing them of Facebook’s Customer Data collection, which is mainly related to personalized ads. Zoom’s privacy policy mentions that its advertising partners (the policy gives as an example Google Ads and Google Analytics) automatically collect some data, however, Facebook is not specifically mentioned in regards to data collection.

Reportedly, Zoom sends Facebook information about the user’s device model, time zone, city, phone carrier, along with a unique advertiser identifier, which is used to provide data for targeted ads.

Will Strafach, an iOS researcher and owner of iOS VPN and privacy provider app Guardian, confirmed that the Zoom iOS app sends data to Facebook, but he stated that there is no direct evidence of any sensitive information being disclosed.