Aleksandr Kongan, a Russian-American Cambridge University Professor was said to have collected Facebook user data promising them to use it for research, but later gave it out to Cambridge Analytica.
Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook has finally broke the silence by releasing a statement concerning the data scandal, the 2016 US Election and Facebook. In his statement,He said:
“We have a responsibility to protect your data, and if we can’t then we don’t deserve to serve you. I’ve been working to understand exactly what happened and how to make sure this doesn’t happen again. The good news is that the most important actions to prevent this from happening again today we have already taken years ago. But we also made mistakes, there’s more to do, and we need to step up and do it.
“I started Facebook, and at the end of the day I’m responsible for what happens on our platform. I’m serious about doing what it takes to protect our community. While this specific issue involving Cambridge Analytica should no longer happen with new apps today, that doesn’t change what happened in the past. We will learn from this experience to secure our platform further and make our community safer for everyone going forward.”
Mark Zuckerberg has decided to take more action to secure and to prevent any bad actors from misusing Facebook user data. In the light, he outlined these processes below:
1. Facebook will investigate all apps that had access to large amounts of information from before the 2014 update and will audit any apps with suspicious activity and will ban any developer that does not cooperate with a thorough audit and Facebook will notify all users of the app including those people who used Kogan’s personality app.
2. Facebook will further restrict developer’s access to personal data by removing developer’s access to data if a user hasn’t used the app in three months. The only thing that developers will be able to see from then on will be name, profile photo, and email address. In addition to user approval, devs will also need to sign a contract before asking anyone for further info.
3. In the next month, Facebook will show all users a tool at the top of the News Feed that can be used to revoke apps that you’ve allowed access to your info in the past. (This tool already exists in the Privacy settings, but Facebook will highlight it in the News Feed so it’s more visible).
