Facebook scandal snares 64, 000 Kiwis
Privacy Commissioner John Edwards has requested more information from Facebook about what 63,724 compromised accounts in New Zealand may have been exposed to.
Facebook revealed yesterday that just under 64,000 New Zealanders’ accounts may have been affected by data firm Cambridge Analytica’s ‘‘misuse’’ of 87 million people’s data globally.
Of the Kiwis possibly affected, 10 are estimated to have downloaded the personality quiz a pp, this is your digital life, that facilitated the breach – possibly impacting thousands of their friends’ accounts, Facebook spokeswoman Antonia Sanda said.
Three million New Zealanders have Facebook accounts.
‘‘There has been some manipulation of people’s news feeds.’’
Privacy Commissioner John Edwards
Edwards said ‘‘goodness knows’’ what advertisements or apps the compromised accounts had been exposed to on the social media platform since 2015, when the app was deployed.
Cambridge Analytica allegedly used information about Facebook users’ personalities to target people with propaganda during the 2016 United States presidential election and the United Kingdom’s Brexit referendum.
The third-party app also gathered information on the Facebook friends tied to the accounts who downloaded the app, without their authorisation.
Edwards said he did not know what New Zealanders users’ information could have been used to manipulate.
‘‘I have no better idea than anyone. There has been some manipulation of people’s news feeds. The scope to misuse is pretty wide.’’
He had not decided to investigate the case; however, he was interested in speaking to the 10 people who downloaded the app to ask what they had seen on their news feed, he said.
Edwards was not surprised that New Zealand accounts were caught up in the scandal, but he was ‘‘astounded’’ that thousands of accounts were affected by only 10 downloads of the app.
He said Facebook was ‘‘a little bit slow’’ to take action against Cambridge Analytica and its parent company, SCL.
However, he could not condemn the actions taken since it found out about the UK-based firm’s intentions. Facebook banned the app, this is your digital life, last month when a former Cambridge Analytica employee blew the whistle on its data-mining purposes.
Sanda said every user whose information was possibly compromised by Cambridge Analytica would be notified by Facebook.
‘‘We will begin showing everyone on Facebook at top of their news feed the apps they have connected to and an easy way to delete them. As part of this, we will let people know if their data might have been accessed by CA.’’
Experts suggest that concerned Facebook users start by switching off its access to their GPS location in ‘‘Settings’’. They also suggest changing who can see posts to ‘‘Only Friends’’.
Facebook announced last week that 87 million accounts could have been compromised. More than 80 per cent of those were in the United States. More than 311,000 of them were in Australia.
It reached those numbers by calculating the maximum possible number of friends that every person who downloaded the this is your digital life a pp could have had since 2015, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg said on a media conference call last week.
He admitted the technology giant did not do enough to protect users from third-party apps.
It had begun auditing every third-party app with suspicious activity, a process he said would take years.