Aussie inquiry

Mr Watts said the Privacy Commissioner also could find it difficult to prove beyond a doubt that Facebook broke its privacy policy in Australia, given onerous conditions users accepted to use the social network.

“Facebook’s terms and conditions when you sign up ... permit it to do almost anything with your information,” he said.

“Given that consent — and there is a question over whether it’s a valid consent — there may be no breach of privacy law.”

Facebook revealed the true number of Australians involved in the company’s ongoing privacy scandal yesterday as it listed new efforts to limit what third parties could collect from users.

The previous data breach, in 2015, saw Cambridge University psychology professor Dr Aleksandr Kogan use the information of 270,000 Facebook users with permission, but accessed details from their friends, which Facebook estimated to be 87 million users.

Dr Kogan sold the information to Cambridge Analytica to create targeted political advertising.

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, in a conference call following yesterday’s announcement, admitted the social network did not do enough to protect users’ information.

“It’s clear now that we didn’t do enough to prevent abuse,” he said. “That goes for fake news, foreign interference, and data privacy.”

New measures to protect Facebook users would restrict third parties’ access to information including users’ religious and political views, relationship status, customised friends lists, and fitness activity.

Facebook will also introduce a new tool from Tuesday that will tell users whether “their information may have been improperly shared with Cambridge Analytica”.

But Mr Zuckerberg said it would take “years” for the social network to fully address current criticisms.

“I can’t snap my fingers and solve all these issues, given how complex Facebook is. We started ramping up, started a year ago, so we are one year into a three-year push,” he said. “These are big issues. This is a big shift for us.”