Facebook and Monsanto: top shareholders are identical

Seven of the top 12 shareholders of Facebook and Monsanto are identical.

Even more to the point, three of the top five shareholders are the same.

The top shareholder, at the moment, in Monsanto is The Vanguard Group, which is number two on the list of top Facebook shareholders.

FMR, LLC, is the number one Facebook shareholder. For Monsanto, it’s number two.

The State Street Corporation is the number three shareholder for both Facebook and Monsanto.

BlackRock Institutional Trust Company is Monsanto’s number five shareholder, and ranks at number four for Facebook.

The other top dozen shareholders of both Monsanto and Facebook are Jennison Associates, Sands Capital Management, and the Vanguard Total Stock Market Index Fund.

Yes, these are all investment funds, and they spread their enormous money around. They own shares of many, many publicly traded companies

But the comparison of Monsanto and Facebook illustrates how, at the top of the food chain, there is connected wealth. These investment funds can, if they choose to, intercede in companies’ proxy votes to alter company policy.

Read the full story: http://www.minds.com/blog/view/294274078234120192/facebook-and-monsanto-top-shareholders-are-identical

Facebook reads your SMS

But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Better yet: glacier.

“Internet giant Facebook is accessing smartphone users’ personal text messages, an investigation revealed Sunday.
Facebook admitted reading text messages belonging to smartphone users who downloaded the social-networking app and said that it was accessing the data as part of a trial to launch its own messaging service, The (London) Sunday Times reported.
Other well-known companies accessing smartphone users’ personal data – such as text messages – include photo-sharing site Flickr, dating site Badoo and Yahoo Messenger, the paper said.
It claimed that some apps even allow companies to intercept phone calls – while others, such as YouTube, are capable of remotely accessing and operating users’ smartphone cameras to take photographs or videos at any time.
Security app My Remote Lock and the app Tennis Juggling Game were among smaller companies’ apps that may intercept users’ calls, the paper said.”

Source: FoxNews

Note: ALWAYS check the Android “permissions” of any app you want to install. Ask yourself: “why does this wallpaper need to access my contacts or camera?” If it stinks, it stinks!