No data warning on local Facebook
AUSTRALIAN Facebook users can sign up to the social media giant without once seeing any warning their personal information is being supplied to advertisers, political parties and beyond, despite the company’s vow to better inform people about what happens to their data.
Instead, users can search through a 6040-word guide on what information is provided to third parties and which even grants Facebook the right to charge advertisers “to display your name and/or profile picture with your content or information, without any compensation to you”.
The Office of the Australian Information Commissioner is auditing Facebook to see if the data of any Australians was part of a 50-million user breach related to Cambridge Analytica or the third-party apps it took information from.
The OAIC has repeatedly contacted Facebook over concerns about its privacy guides — including back in May 2012 when the company was told its data use policy had a title that was “unclear to users”.
“It may not be clear to users when their friends have installed an app and, in doing so, have provided their information to that app,” commissioner Timothy Pilgrim wrote to Facebook executive Mia Garlick.
The company has since shut down the option for thirdparty apps to take content about a user’s Facebook friends, one loophole exploited by Cambridge Analytica.
In September 2013, Mr Pilgrim again wrote to Ms Garlick about changes to Facebook’s data use policy which had been flagged only a week earlier.
“This is particularly concerning because it appears that Facebook intends to rely on the implied consent of users to the proposed changes, including the secondary use of sensitive information,” he wrote.
A Facebook spokesman declined to comment yesterday when asked why new users were not shown the privacy policy, terms and conditions.
Brands including Mozilla and Tesla have abandoned the social media site after revelations that data had leaked to political consultants at Cambridge Analytica in the 2016 Trump presidential campaign.
Despite apologies from Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg, revelations have emerged which show European regulators warned the company it was failing to ensure that data was protected when passed to third-party software developers.
The British Information Commissioner yesterday raided the offices of Cambridge Analytica over the allegations that it took that data and used it for its own political purposes.