Facebook chief Zuckerberg admits mistakes over data privacy scandal

Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg has admitted mistakes and outlined new steps to protect user data in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal.

Mr Zuckerberg said that Facebook had a “responsibility” to protect its users’ data and if it failed, “we don’t deserve to serve you”.

Both he and Facebook’s No 2, Sheryl Sandberg, have been quiet since news broke on Friday that the political research firm may have used data improperly obtained from roughly 50 million Facebook users to try to sway elections.

Facebook has already taken the most important steps to prevent such a situation from happening again, Mr Zuckerberg said.

For example, in 2014, it reduced access outside apps had to user data. However, some of the measures did not take effect until a year later, allowing Cambridge to access the data in the intervening months. In a Facebook post yseterday, Mr Zuckerberg acknowledgedtherewasmore the company needed to do and said it would ban developers who do not agree to an audit.

An app’s developer will no longer have access to data from people who have not used that app in three months.

Data will also be generally limited to user names, profile photos and email, unless the developer signs a contract with Facebook and gets user approval.

Earlier yesterday, the academic who developed the app

0 Mark Zuckerberg posted on his Facebook page last night that his firm has a ‘responsibility to protect its users’ data used by Cambridge Analytica to harvest data said that he had no idea his work would be used in Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.

Alexandr Kogan, a psychology researcher at Cambridge University, said that both Facebook and Cambridge Analytica had tried to place the blame on him for violating the social media platform’s terms of service, even though Cambridge Analytica assured him that everything he did was legal. “My view is that I’m being basically used as a scapegoat,” he said.

Facebook shares have dropped some 9 per cent since the revelations were first published.

The head of Cambridge Analytica, Alexander Nix, was suspended on Tuesday after Channel 4 News broadcast hidden camera footage of him suggesting the company could use young women to catch opposition politicians in compromising positions.

It came as Theresa May was challenged to “come clean” on the Conservative Party’s links to Cambridge Analytica.

The Tories admitted that there had been “an approach” from Cambridge Analytica to work for the party under David Cameron.

At Prime Minister’s Questions, SNP Westminster leader Ian Blackford asked the Prime Minister to confirm links between her party and Cambridge Analytica’s parent company, SCL Group.

Mr Blackford said the firm “has been run by a chairman of Oxford Conservative Association, its founding chairman was a former Conservative MP, a director appears to have donated over £700,000 to the Tory Party, a former Conservative Party treasurer is a shareholder”.

The Prime Minister said that “as far as I am aware” there were no current Government contracts with Cambridge Analytica or SCL.