Facebook: Untold Story on Privacy Protections and Data Sharing

The Giant of Social media, Facebook; earlier this year has been confronted with privacy challenges of it over 14 million users victims of its overall 2.2 billion users.  The challenges affecting some 14 million users make victims post on Facebook thoughtfully there post are only shared within their confined friends or private to only them. But the challenges affected the 14 million victims where their post went publicly, without their consent.

We noticed there’s a software bug that altered the default privacy settings of over 14 million victims. Which it’s the determinant of who sees what a user posts’. As a result, affected users thoughtfully posting to share to a smaller confined audience or private un-public, But unknowingly to them, their posts are to the open public. Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook CEO tells press. We apologize, The issue is fixed now.

Facebook came under intensifying scrutiny by lawmakers and regulators after news reports that a political consulting firm, Cambridge Analytica, misused the private information of tens of millions of Facebook users.

We begin scrutiny of how data is shared and privacy protections is strengthened. Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, says in a press report. Facebook is facing its worst privacy challenge in years following allegations that Cambridge Analytica, a Trump-affiliated data mining firm, maneuver ways to access millions of users data through app to influence election for Trump, U.S President.

Users who are affected by Cambridge Analytica will have chance to see what apps they use, what information they have shared with those apps, and be able to delete apps they no longer want. Facebook CEO says, Most of the affected users are in the U.S.

As part of the steps Facebook is taking to address scrutiny about outsiders’ access to user data, Facebook outlined several changes to further tighten its policies. For one, its restricting apps access to users data about events, information about groups, such as member lists and content.

In addition, Facebook is also removing the option to search for users by entering a phone number or an email address. While this helped individuals find friends, Facebook says businesses that had phone or email information on their profile, customers were able to collect profile information this way. Facebook says it believes most of its 2.2 billion users had their public profile information scraped by businesses or various malicious actors through this technique at some point.

Facebook is once again in the crosshairs for sharing user data with as many as 60 hardware manufacturers, including Apple, Samsung and Amazon.

According to reports, the deals with the companies, which span the past decade, allowed device manufacturers to access user data without those users’ consent. They can easily get access to their friend’s data, even in cases where users turned off permission to the device manufactures’ platforms.

The report says that the agreements allowed some of those partners access to users’ relationship status, religion, political leaning and upcoming events, among other data.

Facebook has reached data sharing partnerships with at least 60 device makers. Including; Apple, Amazon, BlackBerry, Microsoft and Samsung. Over the last decade, starting before Facebook apps were widely available on smartphones, company officials said. The deals allowed Facebook in his verge to expand its reach and let device manufacturers offer consumers rich features of social networks. E.g messaging, like buttons,  e.t.c.

Most of the partnerships were getting been winded down this year. We’ll remove developers’ access to people’s data if the person has not used an app in three months. Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook says in a press report.