‘Ditch your Facebook accounts’
WhatsApp founder: It’s time Firm’s ‘blind eye to breach’
THE founder of WhatsApp urged people to delete Facebook accounts last night as Mark Zuckerberg made a grovelling apology for failing to protect their data.
Brian Acton’s intervention came as MPs were told the social network “turned a blind eye” to firms hoovering up and selling the personal details of up to 50 million users.
Mr Acton, 46, left WhatsApp in 2017, three years after Facebook bought the business for $11.4billion. And in a blunt message on Twitter, he said: “It is time #deletefacebook.”
Facebook boss Zuckerberg, 33, admitted the platform “made mistakes” and pledged new safeguards. He said: “I started Facebook and at the end of the day I’m responsible for what happens. We have a responsibility to protect your data and if we can’t then we don’t deserve to serve you.”
But his former operations chief told MPs he believed the firm did not probe the extent of abuse to avoid a “worse legal position”.
Sandy Parakilas told the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee of MPs that Facebook learned of data harvesting by Cambridge Analytica from a newspaper. And he claimed safeguards on the site were almost nonexistent.
“Anyone could make a Facebook app” to gather data, he said, adding: “There were no background checks.” Mr Parakilas warned executives of risk and believed Zuckerberg would have been aware of his concerns.
Theresa May said the Government had no current contracts with CA or parent company Strategic Communications Laboratory.
But the Ministry of Defence paid SCL £40,000 for “external training” in 2010/11 and £150,000 for “target audience analysis” in 2014/15. The Home Office and Foreign Office also previously paid the firm for similar work.
CA suspended chief executive Alexander Nix this week after he was filmed in an undercover sting boasting the firm could entrap politicians using offers of bribes and women.