Mark Zuckerberg outlines Facebook’s response to data leak on 50 million users
In the latest development to the news that personal information of over 50 million Facebook users was leaked to the political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica via a Facebook app, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has responded by outlining steps the company will take to tackle this type of problem.
Backstory: In 2013, a Russian-American professor named Aleksandr Kogan wrote a Facebook app, a personality test, which 270,000 Facebook users installed on their accounts. That app scraped their data, and (as was possible back then) scraped the data of their friends as well, resulting in information on 50 million users. This isn’t unusual – lots of Facebook apps request access to user’s data when they install them. However, Kogan subsequently sold that information to a political firm, which is against Facebook’s policies. That firm allegedly used the data to target users with political adverts designed to influence the 2016 presidential election.
While Cambridge Analytica has been placed under high scrutiny, so too has Facebook for allowing a developer to run off with such a large amount of information about their users in the first place.
The questions being directed at Facebook is why is it so easy for app developers to accumulate so much information on users, and how do users (or Facebook) really know how those developers are using the data they collect?
The reality is that it is a privacy nightmare, which is why we generally recommend not installing Facebook apps, and even considering disabling the app platform from your account altogether.
Sponsored Content. Continued below...
Mark Zuckerberg has now responded to the incident, first outlining a timeline (from Facebook’s perspective) of the events that led up to the data leak, and secondly outlining what steps Facebook are going to make to reduce this type of leak in the future.
– Zuckerberg first reiterated that Facebook has already “taken the most important step” and prevented apps from scraping data belonging to the friends of those that install the apps, which they did back in 2014. This is what Kogan’s 2013 app did and how it managed to obtain information on so many different Facebook users.
– Zuckerberg has also said that Facebook will investigate any developer that managed to obtain large amounts of information on users prior to Facebook reducing access to the data of friends back in 2014. Any app that showed signs of suspicious activity would be audited, and if any developer refuses an audit they would be banned from the Facebook platform. Zuckerberg also said that any developer was discovered misusing data, anyone affected by their apps would be informed.
– Next, Facebook has said that any app a Facebook user hasn’t interacted with in over 3 months will have their access to that user’s data revoked.
– Next, the information apps can access about users will be further reduced, by default to only a user’s name, email and profile picture. And if apps want access to extra data or private data, the developers will now need to sign a contract agreement with Facebook, presumably allowing Facebook to seek legal action against a developer if they misuse user data. The Facebook user would still have to consent to the app asking for this data when they install the app.
– Lastly, Zuckerberg announced he will promote the tool that allows users to see what apps they have installed on their account which is normally found in the settings under Apps. This tool will appear at the top of a user’s newsfeed.
Zucerkberg’s statement can be seen here. Is this enough? What response would you like Facebook to give? Let us know.
Keep up-to-date with all our latest articles. Follow us on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.
Continued below...
Thanks for reading! But before you go… as part of our latest series of articles on how to earn a little extra cash using the Internet (without getting scammed) we have been looking into how you can earn gift vouchers (like Amazon vouchers) using reward-per-action websites such as SwagBucks. If you are interested we even have our own sign-up code to get you started. Want to learn more? We discuss it here. (Or you can just sign-up here and use code Nonsense70SB when registering.)
Become a Facebook Supporter. For 0.99p (~$1.30) a month you can become a Facebook fan, meaning you get an optional Supporter Badge when you comment on our Facebook posts, as well as discounts on our merchandise. You can subscribe here (cancel anytime.)
