Photo Credit: Brian Solis, www.briansolis.com/ bub.blicio.us/Wikimedia Commons
Faced with criticism over privacy concerns of Facebook users, the CEO of the social media giant Mark Zuckerberg has regretted the reported data breach of 50 million Americans that took place after it was shared with a political consultancy.
“I’m really sorry that this happened,” Zuckerberg told CNN in an interview days after reports said a Cambridge University researcher Aleksandr Kogan had accessed information of more than 50 million people, and then gave it to Cambridge Analytica for commercial and political use.
The breach occurred some years ago, when Facebook allowed app developers to get personal data about social media users and their friends during years 2007 to 2014.
But Zuckerberg said since then, the company has taken measures to protect private data and has limited third party access to the users’ information.
“We have a responsibility to protect your data, and if we can’t then we don’t deserve to serve you,” the Facebook CEO wrote in a post on the social media platform.
“We also made mistakes, there’s more to do, and we need to step up and do it”.
Facebook users and officials have called for transparency and protection of the data, and some lawmakers have suggested that Zuckerberg should himself before a Capitol Hill panel to answer questions.
American and British media reports suggest that Cambridge Analytica, that had links to President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign continued to have the data at their disposal.
In his Facebook post, the founder of the platform outlined some specific steps the company will take to address concerns stemming from the scandal.
“First, we will investigate all apps that had access to large amounts of information before we changed our platform to dramatically reduce data access in 2014, and we will conduct a full audit of any app with suspicious activity. We will ban any developer from our platform that does not agree to a thorough audit. And if we find developers that misused personally identifiable information, we will ban them and tell everyone affected by those apps. That includes people whose data Kogan misused here as well.
“Second, we will restrict developers’ data access even further to prevent other kinds of abuse. For example, we will remove developers’ access to your data if you haven’t used their app in 3 months. We will reduce the data you give an app when you sign in — to only your name, profile photo, and email address. We’ll require developers to not only get approval but also sign a contract in order to ask anyone for access to their posts or other private data. And we’ll have more changes to share in the next few days.
“Third, we want to make sure you understand which apps you’ve allowed to access your data. In the next month, we will show everyone a tool at the top of your News Feed with the apps you’ve used and an easy way to revoke those apps’ permissions to your data. We already have a tool to do this in your privacy settings, and now we will put this tool at the top of your News Feed to make sure everyone sees it.”
