OTTAWA — Two Facebook users are seeking damages on behalf of hundreds of thousands of Canadians whose personal data may have been improperly used for political purposes. The proposed class-action lawsuit filed by Calgary residents Saul Benary and Karma Holoboff asks the Federal Court to order the social-media giant to bolster its security practices to better protect sensitive information and comply with federal privacy law. It also seeks $1,000 for each of the approximately 622,000 Canadians whose information was shared with others through a digital app. In April last year,…
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Facebook Begins Sharing More Location Data With COVID-19 Researchers And Asks Users To Self-Report Symptoms | The Verge
The company’s Data for Good program is expanding. Facebook is expanding a program that grants researchers access to data about movement patterns in an effort to help improve our understanding of the spread of COVID-19, the company said today. Data for Good, which uses aggregated, anonymized data from Facebook’s apps to inform academic research, will now grant access to three new maps for forecasting the disease’s spread and revealing whether residents of a given region are staying at home. The company will also prompt Facebook users to participate in a…
Read MoreThe FBI Wants To Collect Social Media Data From Instagram, Facebook, And Twitter | Digital Trends
The FBI is looking for a partner to collect data from your social media profiles, which could pit it against new privacy policies Facebook agreed to as part of its $5 billion settlement with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). A request for proposal posted on Aug. 8 reveals that the FBI wants to hire a third party contractor to help it scrape to social media data “to proactively identify and reactively monitor threats to the United States and its interests.” The document was first reported by the Wall Street Journal.…
Read MoreFacebook Will Reportedly Be Fined A Record $5 Billion Over Privacy Mishaps | CNET
The Federal Trade Commission is expected to hit Facebook with a record-setting $5 billion fine for its alleged privacy mishaps, according to The Wall Street Journal, which reported that commissioners voted this week to approve the settlement with the social network. The Republican majority favored the settlement, according to the report, which cited people familiar with the matter. The commission voted 3-2 to settle, the Journal reported. Read full story here: Facebook Will Reportedly Be Fined A Record $5 Billion Over Privacy Mishaps | CNET
Read MoreFacebook Data Leak: Province-By-Province Breakdown Of Affected Canadians | CTV News
The report was the result of a joint investigation launched a year ago by the Privacy Commissioner of Canada and the Information and Privacy Commissioner for British Columbia. The probe was prompted by concerns that Facebook had broken Canadian privacy laws after it was revealed that the social media giant disclosed users’ personal information to a third-party app called “This is Your Digital Life” (TYDL) that was later used to deliver targeted political messaging by Cambridge Analytica. Read full story here: Facebook Data Leak: Province-By-Province Breakdown Of Affected Canadians |…
Read MoreFacebook Won’t Let You Opt-Out Of Its Phone Number ‘Look Up’ Setting | TechCrunch
Users are complaining that the phone number Facebook hassled them to use to secure their account with two-factor authentication has also been associated with their user profile — which anyone can use to “look up” your profile. Worse, Facebook doesn’t give you an option to opt-out. The recent hubbub began today after a tweet by Jeremy Burge blew up, criticizing Facebook’s collection and use of phone numbers, which he likened to “a unique ID that is used to link your identity across every platform on the internet.” Read full story…
Read MoreFacebook Bug Exposed Up To 6.8M Users’ Unposted Photos To Apps | TechCrunch
Reset the “days since the last Facebook privacy scandal” counter, as Facebook has just revealed a Photo API bug gave app developers too much access to the photos of up to 5.6 million users. The bug allowed apps users had approved to pull their timeline photos to also receive their Facebook Stories, Marketplace photos, and most worryingly, photos they’d uploaded to Facebook but never shared. Facebook says the bug ran for 12 days from September 13th to September 25th. Facebook tells TechCrunch it discovered the breach on September 25th, and…
Read MoreIn A Data Driven Tomorrow, Does Privacy Need To Survive the Future? | Digital Trends
“If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear.” It was an argument we heard a lot in the years following Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s famous claim that privacy was no longer a social norm. A lot has changed in the eight years since. The web has evolved, new tools make it easier to protect our privacy online, and scandals with social networks and other online entities have made privacy itself a hot topic once again. Read full story here: In A Data Driven Tomorrow, Does Privacy Need To Survive the…
Read MoreHere’s How To See If You’re Among The 30 Million Compromised Facebook Users | Ars Technica
The attackers who carried out the mass hack that Facebook disclosed two weeks ago obtained user account data belonging to as many as 30 million users, the social network said on Friday. Some of that data—including phone numbers, email addresses, birth dates, searches, location check-ins, and the types of devices used to access the site—came from private accounts or was supposed to be restricted only to friends. Read full story here: Here’s How To See If You’re Among The 30 Million Compromised Facebook Users | Ars Technica
Read MoreFacebook Says At Least 50 million Users Affected By Account Takeover Bug | TechCrunch
Facebook has said 50 million user accounts may be at risk after hackers exploited a security vulnerability on the site. The company said in a blog post Friday that it discovered the bug earlier in the week. The bug is part of the site’s “View As” feature that lets a user see their profile as someone else. Facebook has switched off the “View As” feature in the meantime while it investigates the bug further. The bug allowed hackers to obtain account access tokens, which are used to keep users logged in…
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