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Our Facebook privacy nightmare somehow keeps getting worse.
The vast majority of Facebook users have likely had their public profile data scraped by third-parties, CEO Mark Zuckerberg revealed Wednesday.
SEE ALSO: Deleting Facebook won't fix our privacy nightmare
The seemingly massive privacy loophole was the result of a feature that allowed people to search for friends using their phone number. The setting, which has now been removed, was enabled by default in order to make it easier for users' to find friends.
But on Wednesday, Facebook's chief technology officer Mike Schroepfer revealed that bad actors have been abusing the feature for years in order to gain access to public profile data. "Given the scale and sophistication of the activity we’ve seen, we believe most people on Facebook could have had their public profile scraped in this way," he wrote.
Later, during a call with reporters, Zuckerberg confirmed that a large percentage of Facebook users have likely had their data scraped since the setting was enabled by default.
Learn more / En savoir plus / Mehr erfahren:
https://www.scoop.it/t/21st-century-learning-and-teaching/?&tag=Big+Data..
Our Facebook privacy nightmare somehow keeps getting worse.
The vast majority of Facebook users have likely had their public profile data scraped by third-parties, CEO Mark Zuckerberg revealed Wednesday.
SEE ALSO: Deleting Facebook won't fix our privacy nightmare
The seemingly massive privacy loophole was the result of a feature that allowed people to search for friends using their phone number. The setting, which has now been removed, was enabled by default in order to make it easier for users' to find friends.
But on Wednesday, Facebook's chief technology officer Mike Schroepfer revealed that bad actors have been abusing the feature for years in order to gain access to public profile data. "Given the scale and sophistication of the activity we’ve seen, we believe most people on Facebook could have had their public profile scraped in this way," he wrote.
Later, during a call with reporters, Zuckerberg confirmed that a large percentage of Facebook users have likely had their data scraped since the setting was enabled by default.
Learn more / En savoir plus / Mehr erfahren:
https://www.scoop.it/t/21st-century-learning-and-teaching/?&tag=Big+Data..