Facebook under fire in escalating data row

[Becky]

Facebook is having to answer tough questions about how it allowed Cambridge Analytica to harvest data about millions of users, raising concerns about how tech giants safeguard personal information. BBC News reports:

In addition to calls from US politicians for explanations, Massachusetts' attorney general said it planned to look into the data grab. Other political figures urged the Federal Trade Commission to probe Facebook to assess how well it safeguarded user data.

Antonio Tajani, who heads the European Parliament, said it wanted to find out if data had been misused. He said Facebook had to take more responsibility for users' data and added that "allegations of misuse of Facebook user data is an unacceptable violation of our citizens' privacy rights".

The European Commission is already believed to have made contact with Facebook about the probe.

The UK Prime Minster's spokesman echoed this call, saying: "It is essential that people can have confidence that their personal data will be protected and used in an appropriate way."

Read more here.

 

[V_R]

Its bloody mental what's going on. They're dodgy ****ers.

This is worth a watch.

as is this

 

[muckshifter]

we used to just go down the pub for 'social media' ... and get drunk too.

 

[Abraham Andres Luna]

Remember when candy was a nickel?

 

[Becky]

It's truly horrendous, and frightening how easily people can be manipulated by their fears. These kind of practices should be made illegal in relation to politics. I see that a warrant has been issued to search Cambridge Analytica's offices, so I hope they face justice for what they have done.

It'll be interesting to hear more about this tonight - I think Channel 4 News will be focusing on CA's work in the US, should be very interesting

 

[Becky]

'Utterly horrifying': ex-Facebook insider says covert data harvesting was routine

“My concerns were that all of the data that left Facebook servers to developers could not be monitored by Facebook, so we had no idea what developers were doing with the data,” he said.

Parakilas said Facebook had terms of service and settings that “people didn’t read or understand” and the company did not use its enforcement mechanisms, including audits of external developers, to ensure data was not being misused.

Parakilas, whose job it was to investigate data breaches by developers similar to the one later suspected of Global Science Research, which harvested tens of millions of Facebook profiles and provided the data to Cambridge Analytica, said the slew of recent disclosures had left him disappointed with his superiors for not heeding his warnings.

“It has been painful watching,” he said. “Because I know that they could have prevented it.”

 

[nivrip]

We have to face up to it - NONE of our data is safe and never will be again.

It's a ******* disgrace.

 

[Abraham Andres Luna]

I understand why none of our data is safe, the authorities have to capture terrorists any way they can.

 

[nivrip]

And another reason is that every time we tick that box agreeing to Terms and Conditions we are also agreeing to allow the company involved to share our data. It's usually there somewhere in the very small print that none of us ever read.

They are, of course, very sneaky but some of this is self inflicted.