Facebook has not fully answered data privacy questions, say United Kingdom lawmakers

Social Networking Lifts Concerns About Data Misuse

Social Networking Lifts Concerns About Data Misuse

After, another major social media outlet Twitter has now been caught up in the data scandal involving Cambridge Analytica, the British political consulting firm which collected the data of almost 87 million Facebook users without their knowledge and permission, according to a media report.

In the latest of a string of security breaches, a report from New Scientist has revealed a popular personality app insufficiently protected the "anonymous" data of participants.

The compromised data was said to be highly sensitive and reveals personal information of Facebook users like the results of their psychological tests.

I guess if you just leave all that personal data you collected for sale to others openly exposed on the web for years, you have to wonder how valuable it truly is. Damian Collins, chair of the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee, said in a statement: "It is disappointing that a company with the resources of Facebook chooses not to provide a sufficient level of detail and transparency on various points".

Experts are anxious that the researchers didn't do enough to anonymize the data, as well.

The publicly available username and password were sitting on the code-sharing website GitHub.

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"To date, thousands of apps have been investigated and around 200 have been suspended, pending a thorough investigation into whether they did in fact misuse any data". "We are now investigating the app, and if myPersonality refuses to cooperate or fails our audit, we will ban it".

The report further claimed that Cambridge Analytica actually tried to get this data too from the researchers David Stillwell and Michal Kosinski of the University of Cambridge's The Psychometrics Centre.

Facebook already suspended myPersonality from the social networking site last month, saying the application is already under investigation for potentially violating their policies.

Facebook has said Mark Zuckerberg has no plans to come to the United Kingdom to give evidence to parliament despite the threat of a formal summons, prompting frustrated MPs inquiring into the Cambridge Analytica data breach to ask if he would appear via video link instead.

It added that "Cambridge Analytica is a data-driven marketing agency and does not manipulate political views".

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