March 19, 2018 - Facebook data of 50 million users exploited
Facebook has suspended Cambridge Analytica and its parent company from its platform after claiming it had improperly obtained information on 50 million user profiles and has declined to comment on the number of accounts whose information was shared.
In addition, the user data the analysis firm had received from a researcher — whose company Global Science Research had obtained it from a personality quiz app accessed through Facebook — was not destroyed as promised. Cambridge Analytica still has most of all of the data collected from Facebook user profiles, which includes details about users' identities, their friends and "likes," according to the report.
The data itself came into Cambridge Analytica's hands via a popular Facebook personality quiz, called myPersonality, that was essentially a Trojan horse for harvesting information that could be used to build psychological profiles of the people who took the quiz (and, alarmingly, all of their Facebook "friends," too).
Similarly, in 2013. Global Science's Aleksandr Kogan, a researcher in cognitive and behavioral neuroscience at the University of Cambridge, gained access to the personal information of 270,000 Facebook users after they chose to download his app, “thisisyourdigitallife,” which billed itself as a research app used by psychologists. The information included hometown, content the users liked and their friends.
According to the New York Times, 30 million of those breached profiles had enough information to match users to other records and build profiles of them.
Facebook declined to comment on the number of accounts whose information was shared.
You can check (and delete) apps with access to your Facebook profile and other sites logged into using your Facebook account in a desktop browser or Facebook’s mobile apps.
In a browser, click or tap the downward-facing triangle at the top right, then select “Settings” then “Apps.”
In iOS, that button is at bottom right, after which you tap “Settings,” “Account Settings” then “Apps.”
In Android, tap the three-line button at the top right, select “Account settings,” then “Apps.”
In either mobile app, tap a “Logged in with Facebook” banner.
You’ll now see a list of apps and sites, grouped by who on Facebook can see you use them — everyone, friends only, a custom setting or only you.
READ MORE: Facebook stock dives 7%, worst in four years; it plans audit over misuse of user data
February 20, 2018 - Spam Text Notifications
Have you received text notifications from Facebook? Although Facebook refers to these texts as 'bugs', they are SPAM notifications used to access your account.
"The bug was indeed using people’s phone numbers — which the provided when upon signing up for two – factor authentication — to send them spam notifications and, when they replied, post status updates on their profile without consent."
“It was not our intention to send non-security-related SMS notifications to these phone numbers, and I am sorry for any inconvenience these messages might have caused,” Alex Stamos, Facebook Chief Security Officer said.
READ MORE: Security Breach At Facebook Makes Their Security Officials Apologize
June 24, 2013 - Information Leak of Six Million Users’ Contact Information
Facebook admitted to inadvertently exposed six million users’ phone numbers and email addresses to unauthorized viewers over the past year.
Facebook blamed the information leak on a technical glitch in its archive of 1.1 billion users’ contact information.
READ MORE: Facebook Suffered Year-Long User Data Breach
#businessinformation #stolendata #informationtechnology #internetsecurity #compromiseddata #hackers