Items tagged with cambridge analytica
Facebook had an incredibly rough 2018. The company was rocked by the Cambridge Analytica scanda lthat it initially tried to suppress, but eventually made its way to the light of day. Cambridge Analytica was able to access personal details on nearly 90 million of Facebook customers without their permission. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg CEO Mark Zuckerberg was eventually dragged to Capitol Hill to sit before a congressional firing squad to explain what went wrong, but by all accounts was able to dodge any serious wounds from the well-publicized hearing. Since that time, representatives for Facebook have been meeting with officials from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to agree...
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Facebook users who are concerned about their privacy may need to worry about more than the apps that they or their friends download. The social media giant purportedly gave over sixty smartphone developers access to Facebook users’ information. Corporations such as Apple, Samsung, Amazon, BlackBerry, and Microsoft have reportedly not only been able to comb through their own customers’ data over the last decade, but the personal information of their customers’ Facebook friends. According to a report by The New York Times, Facebook made agreements with over sixty device makers to give them access to features such as the “Like” button. These arrangements allowed Facebook...
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The name Cambridge Analytica has become synonymous with the illicit use of Facebook user data over the last few months. Facebook originally claimed that Cambridge had exploited the data of 50 million users during the last U.S. Presidential election. The social giant came back later and said that Cambridge Analytica had improperly accessed data on 87 million Facebook users. The privacy fiasco resulted in Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg having to testify in front of Congress. Cambridge Analytica CEO Alexander Nix speaking in November 2017 The fallout from the privacy debacle is now forcing Cambridge Analytica to close up shop. The company has announced in the U.K. that SCL Elections Ltd. as well as...
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It is time to unleash your inner Boba Fett. Facebook just announced a bounty program that will award people who uncover data abuses. The program offers up to $40,000 USD for substantiated cases. Facebook's chief security officer, Alex Stamos stated that the bounty program “Will help us find the cases of data abuse not tied to security vulnerability. ... This will cover both hemispheres, and help surface more cases like Cambridge Analytica so we can know about it first and take action.” Before you start counting your coin, it is important to note that the bounty program has very specific requirements. Facebook is looking for “any situation where data that was legitimately collected...
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Facebook's chief technology officer Mike Schroepfer wrote a blog post outlining all the ways the world's largest social network intends to protect user data, including some key changes to various APIs that previously made it a bit too easy for third parties to collect personal information. Buried in the post, however, is an alarming update on how many users were affected by the Cambridge Analytical scandal—according to Schroepfer, the number now stands at 87 million. "In total, we believe the Facebook information of up to 87 million people—mostly in the US—may have been improperly shared with Cambridge Analytica," Schroepfer wrote. Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg...
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Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg is reportedly planning to testify before Congress in the coming weeks on how it came to be that Cambridge Analytica, a political data firm and consultation agency, could obtain information about tens of millions of Facebook users. It is the latest development in the ongoing saga surrounding the Cambridge Analytica situation, with Zuckerberg having previously apologized for not doing a better job of securing people's data. "We have a responsibility to protect your data, and if we can't then we don't deserve to serve you," wrote Zuckerberg. "I've been working to understand exactly what happened and how to make sure this doesn't happen again." Zuckerberg...
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We've heard from a number of different parties involved in the Cambridge Analytica-Facebook scandal that erupted over the past week. However, one key person at the center of it all had yet to publicly comment at length: Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Zuckerberg finally broke his silence this afternoon with a lengthy post on his social media platform of choice. "We have a responsibility to protect your data, and if we can't then we don't deserve to serve you," wrote Zuckerberg. "I've been working to understand exactly what happened and how to make sure this doesn't happen again." Zuckerberg went on to say that Facebook made some mistakes along the way with regards to handling the mismanagement...
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After making billions of dollars from selling his messaging service to Facebook, WhatsApp co-founder Brian Acton says the time has come to move on from the world's most popular social networking service. He is not just talking about himself, either. Acton on Tuesday night tweeted, "It is time. #deletefacebook," using a hashtag that has been trending since the scandal with Cambridge Analytica made headlines. Image Source: Flickr via mkhmarketing / howtostartablogonline.net Acton previously worked at Yahoo before co-founding WhatsApp, a cross-platform mobile messaging service in 2009. Five years later, Facebook acquired WhatsApp for $19 billion, including $4 billion in cash, $12 billion in Facebook...
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Facebook has suspended Strategic Communications Laboratories (SCL) and its political data analytics firm, Cambridge Analytica, while it investigates claims that it did not delete personal data of Facebook users like it was supposed to. The analytics firm worked on Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign in an effort to target and sway potentially tens of millions of voters. It is a messy situation, one that has led to reports of Facebook suffering a security breach. Facebook denies that is how things went down, saying that is "completely false" and that its users knowingly provided their personal information to a third-party app. "No systems were infiltrated, and no passwords or sensitive pieces...
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