Zuckerberg says sorry in British ads

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg took out full-page ads in almost all British national newspapers on Sunday to apologise for a huge data privacy scandal.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg took out full-page ads in almost all British national newspapers on Sunday to apologise for a huge data privacy scandal.

“We have a responsibility to protect your information. If we can’t, we don’t deserve it,” the ads read.

A quiz developed by a university researcher “leaked Facebook data of millions of people in 2014”, Zuckerberg said.

“This was a breach of trust, and I’m sorry we didn’t do more at the time. We’re now taking steps to make sure this doesn’t happen again,” he said.

The statement reflects public statements by Zuckerberg last week after the row prompted investigations in Europe and the US and sent Facebook’s share price plunging.

Facebook had changed the rules so no such data breach could happen again, he said.

“We’re also investigating every single app that had access to large amounts of data before we fixed this. We expect there are others,” he wrote. “When we find them, we will ban them and tell everyone affected.”

There was no mention of the British firm accused of using the data, Cambridge Analytica, which worked on US President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign.

It has blamed University of Cambridge researcher Alexsandr Kogan for any potential breach of data rules. Kogan created an app that was downloaded by 270,000 people, but allowed access to tens of millions of their contacts.

Facebook says he passed this to Cambridge Analytica without its knowledge. Kogan says he is being made a scapegoat.