TheNewsGuru

Tag: Facebook

  • Cambridge Analytica: Finally investigation unravels data size mystery

    The report of an independent investigation to unravel the mystery behind data analytics firm, Cambridge Analytica (CA), harvesting over 87 million Facebook users data have been made public.

    The investigation reveals SCL Elections, parent company of CA entered into two contract agreements with Cambridge University Professor Aleksandr Kogan’s firm, Global Science Research (“GSR”) that developed the ‘This Is Your Digital Life’ personality quiz app with which the over 87 million Facebook users data was harvested.

    According to the investigation report, the first contract refers to the provision by GSR to SCL of a core sample of 2 million individuals in 11 states in the USA; the information to be provided in respect of the individuals consisted of the name, the gender, birthday and/or location.

    Also, according to the report, in the second contract, which superseded the first contract, GSR agreed to supply SCL with a copy of 30 million records of demographic data, in return for a payment of £200,000.00.

    “The second contract gave SCL the right to acquire the modelled derivative ‘personality data’ developed by GSR, with some of the underlying demographic data (including Facebook ‘Likes’), that GSR collected as part of the initial research project. In the Addendum, the total consideration for this work was increased to £233,000.00,” the report read.

    However, the investigation reveals, contrary to the over 87 million Facebook users data reported to have been compromised, GSR only delivered to SCL personality models for around 26 million individuals, instead of models for 30 million users, as envisaged by the second contract.

    TheNewsGuru finds that this large figure was achieved because GSR was able to collect data in respect of the Facebook friends of each survey participant, if the privacy settings of the friends, allowed for this.

    Using the OCEAN scores for the survey participants, Professor Kogan was able to build a model for predicting the likely OCEAN scores for the Facebook friends, whose data had been collected. This was done by attributing similar scores to those individuals with similar Facebook “likes”.

    “This data was predictive data, not established data from the survey (that is to say, derivative data),” Julian Malins Q. C. and Linda Hudson stated in the investigation report, while also stressing that “The suggestion that is currently circulating in the media, that the data of 87 million users was provided by GSR to SCL is not correct”.

    The report, however, states that “It is simply not known by SCL or CA how many users’ data was actually harvested by GSR from Facebook, whether 50 million, or, as now suggested, 87 million. All that can be said by SCL or CA is that GSR delivered data on 26 million individuals in the 11 relevant states of the USA, to SCL”.

    Meanwhile, the same report confirmed Israeli intelligence involvement in the 2015 presidential elections in Nigeria.

     

  • Breaking: Investigation confirms Israeli intelligence involvement in Nigeria’s election

    Breaking: Investigation confirms Israeli intelligence involvement in Nigeria’s election

    An investigation into the Cambridge Analytica (CA) data privacy scandal has revealed key findings and confirmed Israeli intelligence involvement in the 2015 presidential elections in Nigeria.

    TheNewsGuru reports independent investigators, Julian Malins Q. C. and Linda Hudson, contracted to dig into the data privacy scandal, confirmed that Israeli intelligence worked to campaign for former President Goodluck Jonathan in the 2015 elections.

    “It is correct that during the 2015 campaign, the SCL team was aware that there was also working for Goodluck Jonathan, entirely separately instructed, an Israeli intelligence gathering company,” Julian Malins Q. C. and Linda Hudson stated in their report.

    The Julian Malins Q. C. and Linda Hudson report, however, absorbed Cambridge Analytica of wrongdoing in the elections, stressing that SCL Elections did no work with the Israeli intelligence gathering company.

    SCL Elections and its offspring data analytics firm, CA, face allegations of improper involvement in the 2007 and 2015 elections on behalf of their client through a series of unlawful and unethical manoeuvres.

    SCL and CA was alleged to have aided in ‘hacking’ or unlawfully gaining access to Muhammadu Buhari’s personal data when he was a candidate in the presidential election and that SCL’s and CA’s work for the election campaign on behalf of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP) broke Nigerian electoral law.

    It was also alleged that SCL and CA engaged AggregateIQ in the 2015 Nigerian presidential election to produce and publish a video to frighten voters with terrifying images of what would happen if sharia law was imposed by Muhammadu Buhari, if he were to be elected.

    “SCL’s contractual involvement in Nigerian elections was to provide advertising, marketing and PR services on behalf of the Goodluck Jonathan campaigns,” the investigators stated in the report.

    The report further stated that evidence was not found that SCL broke Nigerian electoral law and that the allegation that Buhari’s personal data was “hacked” is denied by staff at SCL and that nothing specific was found in the way of “hacked” data concerning Buhari, which was published to his detriment.

    “As to AggregateIQ, that company, which is Canadian and is entirely separate from SCL and CA, may or may not have supplied the Goodluck Jonathan campaign with videos, whether false and scurrilous or not. But I have seen no evidence to support, the Wylie allegation, that SCL and/or CA had anything to do with this.

    “I have to repeat, however, that, given the evidential difficulties described earlier, my conclusions here also have to be of a preliminary, rather than final nature,” the report read.

     

  • Facebook announces dating feature, to engage ‘army’ on security

    Facebook announces dating feature, to engage ‘army’ on security

    Mark Zuckerberg on Tuesday announced a new dating feature for the Facebook app and revealed before the year 2018 ends, the social media platform will engage an army of 20,000 people to work on security and content review.

    The Facebook founder and chief executive officer made this known in his keynote at the platform’s F8 conference, an annual two-day event where developers come together to explore the future of technology.

    Zuckerberg kicked off the day talking on how the platform is taking a broader view of responsibility by not only giving people powerful tools, but also making sure those tools are used for good.

    “By the end of this year, we will have 20,000 people working on security and content review on Facebook,” he said while also stressing responsibility to keep building new services that will bring people together in meaningful new ways across Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger and Oculus.

    TheNewsGuru reports the over 20,000 people that would be commissioned to work on security and content review will oversee spam, fake accounts and hoaxes on the social media platform.

    Zuckerberg made some other big announcements for the platform that include a feature for users to Clear History.

    “In your web browser, you have a simple way to clear your cookies and history. The idea is a lot of sites need cookies to work, but you should still be able to flush your history whenever you want.

    “We’re building a version of this for Facebook too. It will be a simple control to clear your browsing history on Facebook — what you’ve clicked on, websites you’ve visited, and so on.

    “To be clear, when you clear your cookies in your browser, it can make parts of your experience worse. You may have to sign back in to every website, and you may have to reconfigure things. The same will be true here. Your Facebook won’t be as good while it relearns your preferences.

    “But after going through our systems, this is an example of the kind of control we think you should have. It’s something privacy advocates have been asking for — and we will work with them to make sure we get it right,” he stated.

    Another huge announcement the founder made for the platform is a feature for dating and relationships within the Facebook app.

    “People already use Facebook to meet new people, and we want to make that experience better.

    “People will be able to create a dating profile that is separate from their Facebook profile — and potential matches will be recommended based on dating preferences, things in common, and mutual friends.

    “They’ll have the option to discover others with similar interests through their Groups or Events.

    “However, what people do within the dating feature will not be shown to their friends. We’ll share more information when this begins testing later this year,” Zuckerberg said.

    https://www.facebook.com/zuck/videos/10104900382520941/

     

  • Instagram sets for 5 new mind-blowing features

    The world’s most popular image-sharing social network, Instagram is reportedly planning to add several new functional features to its interface as it looks to up the ante against Snapchat.

    These new features might include a new video call feature, Stories reactions – similar to the ones on Facebook, a new Slow-Mo mode for Stories, a Mute button to remove certain profiles from your feed, and a new Calendar view for Instagram Stories’ archive.

    As per a series of tweets by user @wongmjane, Facebook-owned Instagram seems to be testing quite a handful of features in an attempt to take on competitors by offering as much functionality as possible.

    Instagram is also testing letting users tag Facebook friends in posts

     

  • Cambridge Analytica: Twitter involvement comes to light

    After the Facebook data scandal, it has now come to notice that Twitter had also sold data access to a Cambridge Analytica researcher who gathered the data of nearly 87 million Facebook users without their knowledge, The Sunday Telegraph reported.

    According to the report, Twitter sold public data access in 2015 to Aleksandr Kogan, then a psychology researcher with University of Cambridge and his company Global Science Research (GSR).

    The quiz app “This Is Your Digital Life” developed by Kogan and his firm, collected data from millions of Facebook users without their consent in 2014-2015.

    “GSR paid for one day of access in 2015, Twitter said, and scooped up a ‘random sample’ of public tweets covering a period between December 2014 and April 2015. Twitter added that it ‘did not find any access’ to private information,” the report noted.

    Kogan reportedly said the Twitter data had only been used to create “brand reports” and “survey extender tools” and that he had not violated Twitter’s policies.

    Twitter, however, said it had banned GSR and Cambridge Analytica from buying data or running adverts on the website and that no private data had been accessed.

    “Twitter has also made the policy decision to off-board advertising from all accounts owned and operated by Cambridge Analytica.

    “This decision is based on our determination that Cambridge Analytica operates using a business model that inherently conflicts with acceptable Twitter Ads business practices,” The Telegraph reported, citing a Twitter spokesperson.

    In a first interview after the Facebook data scandal broke out, Kogan told CBS News earlier this month that he was not sure whether he ever read Facebook’s developer policy.

    “The idea that we stole the data, I think, is technically incorrect. I mean, they created these great tools for developers to collect the data.

    “And they made it very easy. I mean, this was not a hack. This was, ‘Here’s the door. It’s open. We’re giving away the groceries. Please collect them’,” Kogan told the TV show host.

    Kogan said he believes his assumptions were misguided and that what he did in 2014 “was not right and was not wise”.

     

  • WhatsApp raises minimum age in Europe to 16

    WhatsApp, the popular messaging service owned by Facebook Inc, is raising its minimum age from 13 to 16 in Europe to help it comply with new data privacy rules coming into force in May.

    WhatsApp will ask European users to confirm they are at least 16 years old when they are prompted to agree new terms of service and a privacy policy provided by a new WhatsApp Ireland Ltd entity in the next few weeks.

    It is not clear how or if the age limit will be checked given the limited data requested and held by the service.

    Facebook, which has a separate data policy, is taking a different approach to teens aged between 13 and 15 in order to comply with the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) law.

    It is asking them to nominate a parent or guardian to give permission for them to share information on the platform, otherwise they will not see a fully personalised version of the social media platform.

    But WhatsApp, which had more than 1.5 billion users in January according to Facebook, said in a blog post it was not asking for any new rights to collect personal information in the agreement it has created for the EU.

    “Our goal is simply to explain how we use and protect the limited information we have about you,” it said.

    WhatsApp, founded in 2009, has come under pressure from some European governments in recent years because of its end-to-end encrypted messaging system and its plan to share more data with its parent, Facebook.

    Facebook itself is under scrutiny from regulators and lawmakers around the world since disclosing in March that the personal information of millions of users wrongly ended up in the hands of political consultancy Cambridge Analytica, setting off wider concerns about how it handles user data.

    WhatsApp’s minimum age of use will remain 13 years in the rest of the world, in line with its parent.
    GDPR is the biggest overhaul of online privacy since the birth of the internet, giving Europeans the right to know what data is stored on them and the right to have it deleted.

    Apple Inc and some other tech firms have said they plan to give people in the U.S. and elsewhere the same protections and rights that Europeans will gain.

    European regulators have already disrupted a move by WhatsApp to change its policies to allow it to share users’ phone numbers and other information with Facebook to help improve the product and more effectively target ads.

    WhatsApp suspended the change in Europe after widespread regulatory scrutiny.

    It said on Tuesday it still wanted to share the data at some point.

    “As we have said in the past, we want to work closer with other Facebook companies in the future and we will keep you updated as we develop our plans,” it said.

    Other changes announced by WhatsApp on Tuesday include allowing users to download a report detailing the data it holds on them, such as the make and model of the device they used, their contacts and groups and any blocked numbers.

    “This feature will be rolling out to all users around the world on the newest version of the app,” it said.

    The blog post also points to safety tips on the service, such as the ability to block unwanted users, and delete and report spam.

     

  • Facebook releases long-secret rules on posts

    Facebook Inc on Tuesday released a rule book for the types of posts it allows on its social network.

    This move gives far more detail than ever before on what is permitted on subjects ranging from drug use and sex work to bullying, hate speech and inciting violence.

    Facebook for years has had “community standards” for what people can post.

    But only a relatively brief and general version was publicly available, while it had a far more detailed internal document to decide when individual posts or accounts should be removed.

    Now, the company is providing the longer document on its website to clear up confusion.

    The company wants to be more open about its operations, said Monika Bickert, Facebook’s vice president of product policy and counter-terrorism.

    “You should, when you come to Facebook, understand where we draw these lines and what’s OK and what’s not OK,” Bickert told reporters in a briefing at Facebook’s headquarters.

    Facebook has faced fierce criticism from governments and rights groups in many countries for failing to do enough to stem hate speech.

    It is said to have not prevent the service from being used to promote terrorism, stir sectarian violence and broadcast acts including murder and suicide.

    At the same time, the company has also been accused of doing the bidding of repressive regimes by aggressively removing content that crosses governments.

    It is said to have proved too little information on why certain posts and accounts are removed.

    New policies will, for the first time, allow people to appeal a decision to take down an individual piece of content.

    Previously, only the removal of accounts, Groups and Pages could be appealed.

    Facebook is also beginning to provide the specific reason why content is being taken down for a wider variety of situations.

    Facebook, the world’s largest social network, has become a dominant source of information in many countries around the world.

    It uses both automated software and an army of moderators that now numbers 7,500 to take down text, pictures and videos that violate its rules.

    Under pressure from several governments, it has been beefing up its moderator ranks since last year.

     

  • Facebook responds to questions on user information management

    Facebook on Tuesday provided responses to some questions regarding how it managed user information in advertising and what control users had over the information.

    Mr Rob Goldman, Facebook’s Vice President, Ads, made the responses in the latest edition of Facebook’s Hard Questions, a series that addresses the impact of its products.

    “Advertising lets us keep Facebook free, but we are not blind to the challenges this model poses; it requires a steadfast commitment to privacy.

    “Our promise is this: we do not tell advertisers who you are or sell your information to anyone.

    “ We think relevant advertising and privacy are not in conflict, and we are committed to doing both well,” he said.

    According to Goldman, advertisers can reach Facebook users through information from use of Facebook, information that an advertiser shares with Facebook and information that websites and apps send to Facebook.

    He said that age and gender were used to understand what ads users might be interested in.

    Goldman said that Facebook would not share information personally identifying its users.

    “One can always see the ‘interests’ assigned to one in ad preferences; if one wants, he removes them.’’

    According to the official, some websites and apps that users visit may use Facebook tools to make their contents and ads more relevant.

    “For example, if an online retailer is using Facebook Pixel, it can ask Facebook to show ads to people who looked at a certain style of shoe or put a pair of shoes into their shopping cart.

    “If users do not want the data used to show them ads, they can turn it off in ad preferences.

    According to Goldman, advertisers’ space are sold on Facebook as done in television, radio or newspapers.

    “We do not sell user information.

    “Data collected on Facebook is to give users a better service. For example, we can show you photos from your closest friends at the top of your News Feed, or show you articles about issues that matter most to you, or suggest groups that you might want to join.

    “Data also helps us show you better and more relevant ads, and it lets advertisers reach the right people, including millions of small businesses and non-profits who rely on Facebook everyday to reach people that might be interested in their products or causes.

    “You cannot opt out of ads altogether because ads are what keep Facebook free, but you do have different options to control how your data can and cannot be used to show you ads. They are all found in ad preferences,” he said.

    Goldman said that digital advertising provided a level playing field for small businesses, and enabled them to reach an audience they never could have.

    “You get better ads, advertisers get a tailored audience, and everyone on Facebook gets our firm commitment to privacy,” he said.

     

  • Cambridge Analytica: Kogan defends involvement in Facebook data scandal

    Developer of the ‘This Is Your Digital Life’ personality quiz app that was involved in the Cambridge Analytica data privacy scandal, Professor Aleksandr Kogan, has opened up to defending his involvement.

    The Cambridge University professor developed the personality quiz app with which over 87 million users account on Facebook were compromised when he shared the data harvested by the app with Cambridge Analytica, a data analytics firm.

    TheNewsGuru reports it has been a tumultuous time for both Cambridge Analytica and the founder and chief executive officer of Facebook Mark Zuckerberg, as authorities have sought to know what transpired and if people’s privacy are safe on the social media, especially on Facebook.

    Zuckerberg said the Kogan’s app was downloaded by 270,000 people, which gave Kogan access to their friends amounting to the over 87 million users that were affected.

    According to confessional statements, the data was then passed to the data analytics firm and was eventually used to influence US 2016 presidential election.

    While Facebook has blamed Kogan for misusing the app and the data it harvested, Kogan defended his role on Sunday.

    He said he “never heard a word” of opposition from the social media giant when he was running the personality quiz app, and that he is being used as a scapegoat.

    The Cambridge professor told CBS’s 60 Minutes he was “sincerely sorry” for the data mining, but insisted there was a widespread belief that users knew their data was being sold and shared.

    “Back then we thought it was fine… I think that core idea that we had that everybody knows and nobody cares was fundamentally flawed. And for that, I’m sincerely sorry,” he said.

    The psychologist also accused Facebook of framing him as a “rogue app” and insisted that while he was not sure that he read Facebook’s developer policy banning the transfer or sale of users’ data, the social network failed to enforce it in any case.

    “I had a terms of service that was up there for a year and a half that said I could transfer and sell the data. Never heard a word,” he said, referencing his app’s user agreement.

    “Facebook clearly has never cared,” he told AFP.

    “The belief in Silicon Valley and certainly our belief at that point was that the general public must be aware that their data is being sold and shared and used to advertise to them.”

    On the issue of harvesting the information of friends of app users without explicit permission, Kogan said that capability was “a core feature” of Facebook for years and he estimated “tens of thousands” of apps had engaged in similar practices.

    “This was not a special permission you had to get. This was just something that was available to anybody who wanted it who was a developer,” he said.

    On Tuesday Kogan is set to appear before a British parliamentary committee probing the scandal, where he will discuss his ties with Cambridge Analytica.

     

  • Facebook CEO, EU official discuss privacy protection

    Chief executive officer and founder of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg and European Commission Vice President for the digital single market Andrus Ansip on Wednesday met and discussed issues bothering on privacy protection.

    The European Commission Vice President made this known on Wednesday tweeting about the meeting which also entails how to counter disinformation on the Internet, especially on social media.

    “Discussed with Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg the steps that Facebook has taken and plans to take to protect users privacy and tackle disinformation. There is a wider need to rebuild trust. GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) shows the way forward,” Ansip tweet read.

    Facebook has been under fire for allowing UK-based data analytic firm, Cambridge Analytica, to harvest personal details of more than 87 million users without their permission to target them during the 2015 Nigeria presidential election, the 2016 US presidential election and the Brexit referendum.

    Zuckerberg accepted responsibility for the whole brouhaha when he appeared before US Congress last week, especially for not preventing the social media platform from being used for harm, including fake news, foreign interference in elections and hate speech.

    However, the Facebook CEO pledged to limit the amount of users information apps on the platform can get access to, and said such apps must have to get users’ approval.

    European Parliament on Wednesday renewed its call to Zuckerberg to come before the Parliament to answer questions on the misuse of European citizens’ personal data.

    Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) emphasized that the General Data Protection Regulation that will apply as of May 26 will give citizens control over their personal data and set global standards.

    However, some MEPs pointed out that the new data protection rules will not prevent future scandals and called on the Council to proceed with the e-privacy regulation.