Tag: facebook

February 15, 2019

Facebook Secret Emails

The UK parliament has been trying to hold Facebook to account following its lack of control on data sharing and the massive data breach in 2017 which affected 87 million people.

Cambridge Analytica

The Facebook–Cambridge Analytica scandal in early 2018 revealed that Cambridge Analytica had harvested the personal data of millions of people’s Facebook profiles without their consent and used it for political purposes. This was a shock to many people and showed Facebook had no regard for its user’s privacy or confidential information.

Six4Three

Six4Three are the makers of the app Pinkini and Pinkini was one of many businesses that shared data with Facebook until 2015, when Facebook changed its policies on how information was shared and this meant developers of the app were restricted in accessing data and culminated in the loss of business for Six4Three.

Six4Three then began a year long battle with Facebook.

The company claims Facebook misled developers by encouraging them to build applications based around promised access to data controls and privacy settings and then restricted access to that data.

Emails written by Facebook’s chief and his deputies show the firm struck secret deals to give some developers special access to user data while refusing others.

It is also clear that Facebook deliberately made it difficult for users to be aware of privacy changes to its Android app.

Damian Collins (UK Government chairman of the Commons Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) Committee)

There was believed to be a secret cache of emails between Mark Zuckerberg and other executives that shows that Facebook knew about flaws in its privacy policy and allowed them to be actively exploited before the Cambridge Analytica scandal.

MPs discovered the documents were in the possession of an American software executive visiting London on a business trip and sent an official from the House of Commons to his hotel to retrieve them.

Parliament

It appears from documents that Facebook had been aware that an update to its Android app that let it collect records of users’ calls and texts would be controversial. To mitigate any bad PR, Facebook planned to make it as hard as possible for users to know that this was one of the underlying features.

Facebook is also known to have used data provided by the Israeli analytics firm Onavo to determine which other mobile apps were being downloaded and used by the public. It then used this knowledge to decide which apps to acquire or otherwise treat as a threat

Conclusion

Another example of how Facebook ignore their user’s right to privacy in the belief that the information provided by the users belongs to Facebook and that Facebook can do anything it wants with that data and can treat other businesses as badly as it wishes to.

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January 10, 2019

Data Sharing by APPS Out of Control

Oxford researchers looked at nearly one million APPS on Google Play Store and found that almost 90% of free APPS collect data and send it to Google, plus almost 40% collect data and send it to companies owned by Facebook.

Some of this is legitimate and necessary e.g. collecting and sending data on APP failures which helps the software maker to improve their product and Google Analytics data enables website owners to track their online usage via Google and so on.

But it does seem that a lot is to do with advertising.

The concept of free APPS is of course a tricky one as the APP makers have to make money somehow and passing data to potential advertisers is one way that many users won’t mind. But some of us do mind that our data is shared without our permission and this should not be allowed.

The sort of data collected can include age, gender, location, list of other installed APPS etc.

The research also found that 33% of the APPS send data to Twitter, 26% to Verizon (Yahoo, Tumblr etc.), 22% to Microsoft, 18% to Amazon etc.

These third-party trackers were mostly prevalent in news apps and apps aimed at children and young adults. By tracking user data – which includes information like age, location, gender, buying habits, and other miscellaneous information- companies can form a profile of users. This can then be used to send target specific ads, influence a user’s buying habits or even send political campaign messages.

Used in this manner, profiling of children without attempting to obtain parental consent, is illegal.

Do review the privacy settings on your APPS and delete any APPS you believe are sharing your data without your consent.

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December 26, 2018

Facebook Shares Data with 150 Companies

Facebook shares dropped significantly when the New York Times reported that the social media company allowed more than 150 companies (including Amazon, Microsoft, Netflix and Spotify) to access more users’ personal data than it had previously disclosed.

According to the report, the social network had allowed Microsoft’s Bing search engine to see names of virtually all Facebook users’ friends without consent, and allowed other companies to read Facebook users’ private messages.

Steve Satterfield, Facebook’s director of privacy and public policy, claimed that none of the partnerships violated users’ privacy, or a 2011 agreement with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission to require explicit permission from members before sharing their data.

Facebook has admitted it allowed other big tech companies to read users’ private messages, but denies it did so without consent.

Facebook said it shut down its “instant personalisation” process in 2014, which allowed users to link their Facebook accounts with other services to see public information their friends shared. But it admitted the software components for the service were left in place after it shut down, potentially allowing developers to continue accessing users’ personal information. Facebook said it has “no evidence data was used or misused after the program was shut down.”

This is pretty bad for Facebook as it’s yet another case where the company has shown little regard for its users and prioritised money above privacy.

But, it’s not as bad as it may seem as the other companies involved appear to have had APPS and services that used specific data from Facebook and users had given permission although they may not have known exactly what they were giving permission for.

One day, Facebook may start treating its users properly – we can only hope for that miracle.

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July 18, 2018

Facebook Improves Privacy

Facebook has woken up to the fact that people will no longer put up with Facebook’s disregard for people’s privacy and they are starting to make changes designed to help Facebook users rather than just Facebook’s bank account.

Privacy Alerts

You may have seen an alert, upon visiting your News Feed, asking you to review your privacy settings. Facebook will show you a series of these which cover various topics:

– How Facebook use data from partners to show more relevant advertising

– Political, religious and relationship information you’ve chosen to include in your profile

– How Facebook use facial recognition

– Updates to the terms of service and data policy

You’ll see a summary of the choices you’ve already made and be given the chance to make changes.

Privacy Controls

They’ve redesigned the settings menu on mobile devices to make privacy controls easier to find and use and it’s all accessible from one screen. They’ve also made it clearer to see what information can and can’t be shared with apps.

In addition, there’s a new Privacy Shortcuts feature. From here you can have quick access to the most widely used privacy settings and tools.

Access Your Information

They’ve created a tool called ‘Access Your Information’ – a secure way to access and manage your information, such as posts, reactions, comments, and things you’ve searched for. You can find, download and delete any or all of your Facebook data.

Reward for reporting data misuse

A Data Abuse Bounty was launched recently to reward people who report any misuse of data by app developers.

It’s part of the efforts to more quickly uncover potential abuse of people’s information.

Facebook say they quickly review and respond to reports that identify a credible threat to people’s information, be it a case where a Facebook platform app is trying to collect people’s data to sell it, or pass it onto another party to be sold, or used for scams or political influence. If confirmed data abuse, they’ll shut down the offending app and take legal action against the company selling or buying the data if necessary. Facebook will reward the person who reported the issue and also alert those believed to be affected.

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June 1, 2018

Facebook Conversations Tested

The New Statesman Newspaper carried out an interesting experiment to test whether or not Facebook was listening in to people’s conversations.

Six staff members picked one or more subjects that are not part of their lives and which they had never searched for online or bought anything relevant to the subject etc.

Then they each read out a script (with their phone switched on) designed to point out these subjects in their lives and see if Facebook then started advertising relevant items to them.

The subjects were things such as a vegetarian chatting about her desire for Domino’s Meat Feast pizza.

The most interesting was a lady named Lizzie whose lines included “I just wish there was an app that would sort it all out for you… some kind of contraception app”. When she opened the Facebook app the following morning, she was presented with an advert for Natural Cycles, the first app ever certified for contraception in Europe.

WOW.

However, there’s a psychological phenomenon called the Frequency Illusion (or the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon). It states that If you hear a new word or phrase for the first time and consciously have a conversation about it, finding out what it means, suddenly, for the next few days, you’ll see it constantly.

If someone says to you ‘when was the last time you saw a yellow car?’ you’ll see three in the next two hours.

For the other five people in the experiment (including the vegetarian), Facebook did not show anything even vaguely relevant to the subject’s spoken about. It’s just a statistical effect that some people will experience Facebook offering relevant and unexpected adverts at times that can seem spookily accurate.

Facebook are very clear that they do not listen in to conversations.

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