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Researchers Reportedly Exposed Facebook Quiz Data On 3 Million Users (newscientist.com)
According to a report from New Scientist, researchers exposed quiz data on over three million Facebook users via an insecure website. The data includes answers to intimate questionnaires, and was held by academics from the University of Cambridge's Psychometrics Centre. While the breach isn't as severe as the Cambridge Analytica leak, it is distantly connected as the project previously involved Alexandr Kogan, the researcher at the center of the scandal. From the report: Facebook suspended myPersonality from its platform on April 7 saying the app may have violated its policies due to the language used in the app and on its website to describe how data is shared. More than 6 million people completed the tests on the myPersonality app and nearly half agreed to share data from their Facebook profiles with the project. All of this data was then scooped up and the names removed before it was put on a website to share with other researchers. The terms allow the myPersonality team to use and distribute the data "in an anonymous manner such that the information cannot be traced back to the individual user."
However, for those who were not entitled to access the data set because they didn't have a permanent academic contract, for example, there was an easy workaround. For the last four years, a working username and password has been available online that could be found from a single web search. Anyone who wanted access to the data set could have found the key to download it in less than a minute.
However, for those who were not entitled to access the data set because they didn't have a permanent academic contract, for example, there was an easy workaround. For the last four years, a working username and password has been available online that could be found from a single web search. Anyone who wanted access to the data set could have found the key to download it in less than a minute.
Not a Facebook user either. But I do believe it's generally recognized that fake news and fake posts on Facebook influenced our last election. That was made possible by those promiscuous APIs that will link with any old thing. And aside from politics, I have a problem with the whole sales pitch of "we want to connect the world." I can still get in touch around the world instantly without Facebook, and without my whole life registered in their database. That sales pitch was a genius marketing move, concocted by Zuck in order to make people fall all over themselves to give him their personal data.
There's a distinction between "advertising" and "direct marketing." The latter includes such lovely concepts as junk mail and robocalls. That's what Facebook is designed, from the ground up, to enable.