This leak was less than 4% of a much larger leak that's not getting much attention.
Why doesn't Facebook alert users if their profile was leaked to "malicious actors" who collected profiles of "most of its 2 billion users worldwide".
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2018/04/04...
Scraping websites to collect public information is nothing new. Malicious actors do it all the time, as do non-malicious actors too. Google literally does it.
EDIT: I'm all for facebook messed up and we need more guarantees but lets be objective though. The CA issue is an issue, this 2 billion thing is just a web-crawler.
Sites can control whether they get crawled or not.
Facebook, for example, stops Google from crawling Facebook profiles.
But Facebook allowed "malicious actors" to access to user profiles for "most of its 2 billion users worldwide".
These 2 billion users didn't choose to expose their personal information to "malicious actors", Facebook did it without their consent.
Clearly there needs to be some line drawn, like not permanently keeping an archival of all information shared with Cambridge, as that would potentially cause more harm than good. Yet, knowing how many people were affected, and being able to identify if you were one of them, seems a permanently useful thing.
This of course is a bit idealist, I'm just answering the question on my idea of what should be done - not what will be done. Tbh, I'd rather see that data be held by some government entity and not FB at all, but I'm not sure who that would be, if they exist at all.
(FYI, they probably know your phone number and who you made phone calls to, when, and the durations for the last 5 years)
If you're actually very curious, all I can think of is you could ask your friends if any of them had their info leaked, and if it was through themselves or a common friend. If you're friends with anyone who gave access to the app, you're part of the bunch.
That presumes that users log in and use facebook regularly, and that a users who's data was leaked 3 years ago still has a fecebook account.
That's not how breach notifications are supposed to work - send me an email for crying out loud! I realize they don't classify this as a 'breach', but come on..
Methinks they don't want to do that because lawyers.
Sorry, that's not how breach notification works. Facebook attempts to continue making money off of their customers data being leaked.
- "I deleted my account 3 months ago, so how come my records still exist on your servers"?
- If a class-action or some other litigation takes place, proof that n+1 people's into was shared is worse than n people's info. If an account is deleted, perhaps less risk.
- If the only non-creepy way of verifying who I am is logging in, and I can't log in anymore, any other option is bad PR for FB, and is subject to abuse.
'As a result, it doesn't appear your Facebook information was shared with Cambridge Analytica by "This is Your Digital Life".'
They don't say your information wasn't shared with Cambridge Analytica. They don't even say your information "doesn't appear" to have been shared with Cambridge Analytica. They say it doesn't appear to have been shared by this particular route.
Mere caution on general principles? Or do they know or suspect that there may be other means by which Facebook users' data have been shared with Cambridge Analytica?
[1] https://twitter.com/cld276/status/975568130117459975 [2] http://thehill.com/opinion/technology/379245-whats-genius-fo...
As the tweet cites, Facebook was politically biased in a specific enforcement action in the past. That does not itself indicate that there is any political reasoning behind the decision not to release an Obama tool today.
That's not surprising though as I'm from Germany. And of course it's "not shared" for most Facebook users. However this is highly misleading as this is just one example of data harvesting on Facebook.
It's more logical that they would have had an ongoing effort to keep collecting data.
It's certainly not a common view among people that I know. My view is probably the other extreme from your view in that I don't have a Facebook account for exactly this type of reason.
It seems to me that many people who are not Clinton worked very hard at manufacturing this reputation.
