Facebook collects data beyond users
SAN FRANCISCO, April 17, (Agencies): Facebook, embattled in a scandal over the mishandling of user data, confirmed Monday that it also collected information from people beyond their social network use.
During heated hearings in Congress last week, CEO Mark Zuckerberg had already explained that Facebook collects data beyond what users share on their profiles.
“When you visit a site or app that uses our services, we receive information even if you’re logged out or don’t have a Facebook account,” product management director David Baser said in a post on the social network’s blog.
“This is because other apps and sites don’t know who is using Facebook,” he added, noting Facebook was also following up with Congress on a few dozen questions Zuckerberg was unable to answer at the time of the hearings.
Baser said “many” websites and apps use Facebook services to target content and ads, including via the social network’s Like and Share buttons, when people use their Facebook account to log into another website or app and Facebook ads and measurement tools.
But he stressed the practice was widespread, with companies such as Google and Twitter also doing the same.
“Most websites and apps send the same information to multiple companies each time you visit them,” the post said.
“There are three main ways in which Facebook uses the information we get from other websites and apps: providing our services to these sites or apps; improving safety and security on Facebook; and enhancing our own products and services.
“I want to be clear: We don’t sell people’s data. Period.”
Zuckerberg says Facebook “failed” to protect people’s information following the use by Cambridge Analytica of data scraped from 87 million Facebook users to target political ads ahead of the 2016 US presidential election.
Microsoft, Facebook and more than 30 other global technology companies on Tuesday announced a joint pledge not to assist any government in offensive cyber attacks.
The Cybersecurity Tech Accord, which vows to protect all customers from attacks regardless of geopolitical or criminal motive, follows a year that witnessed an unprecedented level of destructive cyber attacks, including the global WannaCry worm and the devastating NotPetya attack.
“The devastating attacks from the past year demonstrate that cyber security is not just about what any single company can do but also about what we can all do together,” Microsoft President Brad Smith said
in a statement. “This tech sector accord will help us take a principled path toward more effective steps to work together and defend customers around the world.”
Smith, who helped lead efforts to organize the accord, was expected to discuss the alliance in a speech on Tuesday at the RSA cyber security conference in San Francisco.
The accord also promised to establish new formal and informal partnerships within the industry and with security researchers to share threats and coordinate vulnerability disclosures.
The pledge builds on an idea for a so-called Digital Geneva Convention Smith rolled out at least year’s RSA conference, a proposal to create an international body to protect civilians from state-sponsored hacking.