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Apple says it’s banning Facebook’s research app that collects users’ personal information
​

Facebook is at the center of another privacy scandal — and this time it hasn’t just angered users. It has also angered Apple.

The short version: Apple says Facebook broke an agreement it made with Apple by publishing a “research” app for iPhone users that allowed the social giant to collect all kinds of personal data about those users, TechCrunch reported Tuesday. The app allowed Facebook to track users’ app history, their private messages, and their location data. Facebook’s research effort reportedly targeted users as young as 13 years old.

As of last summer, apps that collect that kind of data are against Apple’s privacy guidelines. That means Facebook couldn’t make this research app available through the App Store, which would have required Apple approval.

Instead, Facebook apparently took advantage of Apple’s “Developer Enterprise Program,” which lets approved Apple partners, like Facebook, test and distribute apps specifically for their own employees. In those cases, the employees can use third-party services to download beta versions of apps that aren’t available to the general public.

Apple doesn’t review and approve these apps the way it does for the App Store because they’re only supposed to be downloaded by employees who work for the app’s creator.

Facebook, though, used this program to pay non-employees as much as $20 per month to download the research app without Apple’s knowledge.

Apple’s response, via a PR rep this morning: “We designed our Enterprise Developer Program solely for the internal distribution of apps within an organization. Facebook has been using their membership to distribute a data-collecting app to consumers, which is a clear breach of their agreement with Apple. Any developer using their enterprise certificates to distribute apps to consumers will have their certificates revoked, which is what we did in this case to protect our users and their data.”

Translation: Apple won’t let Facebook distribute the app anymore — a fact that Apple likely communicated to Facebook on Tuesday evening. Apple’s statement also mentions that Facebook’s “certificates” — plural — have been revoked. That implies Facebook cannot distribute other apps to employees through this developer program right now, not just the research app.​


 
What lots of people don't realise is that Facebook is trying to track everyone on the web, everywhere and everything they do. If you have ever visited a website and down the bottom there is a 'share on Facebook' they have tracked you...


German court orders Facebook to redesign data collection, saying it abuses market dominance
​

Facebook has been ordered to curb its data collection practices in Germany after a ruling that the world's largest social network abused its market dominance to gather information about users without their knowledge or consent.

Germany, where privacy concerns run deep, is in the forefront of a global backlash against Facebook, fuelled by last year's Cambridge Analytica scandal in which tens of millions of Facebook profiles were harvested without their users' consent.

The Cartel Office objected in particular to how Facebook pools data on people from third-party apps — including its own WhatsApp and Instagram — and its online tracking of people who aren't even members through Facebook "like" or "share" buttons.

"In future, Facebook will no longer be allowed to force its users to agree to the practically unrestricted collection and assigning of non-Facebook data to their Facebook accounts," Cartel Office chief Andreas Mundt said.

These have gone down badly with Germans, reflecting broader concerns over personal surveillance that dates back to Germany's history of Nazi and Communist rule in the 20th century.

German Justice Minister Katarina Barley welcomed the ruling.

"Users are often unaware of this flow of data and cannot prevent it if they want to use the services," she said.​

 
You Give Apps Sensitive Personal Information. Then They Tell Facebook.
​

Millions of smartphone users confess their most intimate secrets to apps, including when they want to work on their belly fat or the price of the house they checked out last weekend. Other apps know users’ body weight, blood pressure, menstrual cycles or pregnancy status.

Unbeknown to most people, in many cases that data is being shared with someone else: Facebook Inc.

The social-media giant collects intensely personal information from many popular smartphone apps just seconds after users enter it, even if the user has no connection to Facebook, according to testing done by The Wall Street Journal. The apps often send the data without any prominent or specific disclosure, the testing showed.

It is already known that many smartphone apps send information to Facebook about when users open them, and sometimes what they do inside. Previously unreported is how at least 11 popular apps, totaling tens of millions of downloads, have also been sharing sensitive data entered by users. The findings alarmed some privacy experts who reviewed the Journal’s testing.

Facebook is under scrutiny from Washington and European regulators for how it treats the information of users and nonusers alike. It has been fined for allowing now defunct political-data firm Cambridge Analytica illicit access to users’ data and has drawn criticism for giving companies special access to user records well after it said it had walled off that information.

In the case of apps, the Journal’s testing showed that Facebook software collects data from many apps even if no Facebook account is used to log in and if the end user isn’t a Facebook member.

Apple Inc. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google, which operate the two dominant app stores, don’t require apps to disclose all the partners with whom data is shared. Users can decide not to grant permission for an app to access certain types of information, such as their contacts or locations. But these permissions generally don’t apply to the information users supply directly to apps, which is sometimes the most personal.

In the Journal’s testing, Instant Heart Rate: HR Monitor, the most popular heart-rate app on Apple’s iOS, made by California-based Azumio Inc., sent a user’s heart rate to Facebook immediately after it was recorded.

Flo Health Inc.’s Flo Period & Ovulation Tracker, which claims 25 million active users, told Facebook when a user was having her period or informed the app of an intention to get pregnant, the tests showed.

Real-estate app Realtor.com, owned by Move Inc., a subsidiary of Wall Street Journal parent News Corp , sent the social network the location and price of listings that a user viewed, noting which ones were marked as favorites, the tests showed.

None of those apps provided users any apparent way to stop that information from being sent to Facebook.

Facebook said some of the data sharing uncovered by the Journal’s testing appeared to violate its business terms, which instruct app developers not to send it “health, financial information or other categories of sensitive information.” Facebook said it is telling apps flagged by the Journal to stop sending information its users might regard as sensitive. The company said it may take additional action if the apps don’t comply.

“We require app developers to be clear with their users about the information they are sharing with us,” a Facebook spokeswoman said.

At the heart of the issue is an analytics tool Facebook offers developers, which allows them to see statistics about their users’ activities—and to target those users with Facebook ads. Although Facebook’s terms give it latitude to use the data uncovered by the Journal for other purposes, the spokeswoman said it doesn’t do so.

Facebook tells its business partners it uses customer data collected from apps to personalize ads and content on Facebook and to conduct market research, among other things. A patent the company applied for in 2015, which was approved last year, describes how data from apps would be stored on Facebook servers where it could be used to help the company’s algorithms target ads and select content to show users.

Apple said its guidelines require apps to seek “prior user consent” for collecting user data and take steps to prevent unauthorized access by third parties. “When we hear of any developer violating these strict privacy terms and guidelines, we quickly investigate and, if necessary, take immediate action,” the company said.

A Google spokesman declined to comment beyond pointing to the company’s policy requiring apps that handle sensitive data to “disclose the type of parties to which any personal or sensitive user data is shared,” and in some cases to do so prominently.

Before Alice Berg began using Flo to track her periods last June, she checked the app’s terms of service. The 25-year-old student in Oslo says she had grown more cautious about sharing data with apps and wanted to ensure that only a limited amount of her data would be shared with third-parties like Facebook.

Now Ms. Berg said she may delete the app. “I think it’s incredibly dishonest of them that they’re just lying to their users especially when it comes to something so sensitive,” she said.

Flo Health’s privacy policy says it won’t send “information regarding your marked cycles, pregnancy, symptoms, notes and other information that is entered by you and that you do not elect to share” to third-party vendors.

Flo initially said in a written statement that it doesn’t send “critical user data” and that the data it does send Facebook is “depersonalized” to keep it private and secure.

The Journal’s testing, however, showed sensitive information was sent with a unique advertising identifier that can be matched to a device or profile. A Flo spokeswoman subsequently said the company will “substantially limit” its use of external analytics systems while it conducts a privacy audit.

Move, the owner of real-estate app Realtor.com—which sent information to Facebook about properties that users liked, according to the Journal’s tests—said “we strictly adhere to all local, state and federal requirements,” and that its privacy policy “clearly states how user information is collected and shared.” The policy says the app collects a variety of information, including content in which users are interested, and may share it with third parties. It doesn’t mention Facebook.

The Journal tested more than 70 apps that are among the most popular in Apple’s iOS store in categories that handle sensitive user information. The Journal used software to monitor the internet communications triggered by using an app, including the information being sent to Facebook and other third parties. The tests found at least 11 apps sent Facebook potentially sensitive information about how users behaved or actual data they entered.

Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook condemned what he described as a ‘data-industrial complex’ in an October speech to privacy regulators in Europe.Photo: stephanie lecocq/epa-efe/rex/Shutterstock

Among the top 10 finance apps in Apple’s U.S. app store as of Thursday, none appeared to send sensitive information to Facebook, and only two sent any information at all. But at least six of the top 15 health and fitness apps in that store sent potentially sensitive information immediately after it was collected.

Disconnect Inc., a software company that makes tools for people to manage their online privacy, was commissioned by the Journal to retest some of the apps. The company confirmed the Journal’s findings, and said Facebook’s terms allowing it to use the data it collected were unusual.

“This is a big mess,” said Patrick Jackson, Disconnect’s chief technology officer, who analyzed apps on behalf of the Journal. “This is completely independent of the functionality of the app.”

The software the Journal used in its tests wasn’t able to decipher the contents of traffic from Android apps. Esther Onfroy, co-founder of cybersecurity firm Defensive Lab Agency, conducted a separate test showing that at least one app flagged by the Journal’s testing, BetterMe: Weight Loss Workouts, was in its Android version also sharing users’ weights and heights with Facebook as soon as they were entered.

BetterMe Ltd. didn’t respond to email and social-media inquires from the Journal. On Feb. 16, after being contacted by the Journal, it updated its privacy policy, replacing a general reference to Facebook’s analytics to one that says it shares information with Facebook so it can determine “the average weight and height of our users, how many users chose a particular problem area of their body, and other interactions.”

Apps often integrate code known as software-development kits, or SDKs, that help developers integrate certain features or functions. Any information shared with an app may also be shared with the maker of the embedded SDK. There are an array of SDKs, including Facebook’s, that allow apps to better understand their users’ behavior or to collect data to sell targeted advertising.

Facebook’s SDK, which is contained in thousands of apps, includes an analytics service called “App Events” that allows developers to look at trends among their users. Apps can tell the SDK to record a set of standardized actions taken by users, such as when a user completes a purchase. App developers also can define “custom app events” for Facebook to capture—and that is how the sensitive information the Journal detected was sent.

Facebook says on its website it uses customer data from its SDK, combined with other data it collects, to personalize ads and content, as well as to “improve other experiences on Facebook, including News Feed and Search content ranking capabilities.”

But a spokeswoman said Facebook doesn’t use custom events—the ones that can contain sensitive information—for those purposes. She said Facebook automatically deletes some sensitive data it might receive, such as Social Security numbers.

She said Facebook is now looking into how to search for apps that violate its terms, and to build safeguards to prevent Facebook from storing sensitive data that apps may send.

Privacy lawyers say the collection of health data by nonhealth entities is legal in most U.S. states, provided there is sufficient disclosure in an app’s and Facebook’s terms of service. The Federal Trade Commission has taken an interest in cases in which data sharing deviates widely from what users might expect, particularly if any explanation was hard for users to find, said Woodrow Hartzog, a professor of law and computer science at Northeastern University.

The privacy policy for Azumio, maker of the Instant Heart Rate app, says it collects health information including heart rates, and that it may provide some personal data to third-party service providers and advertising providers. It doesn’t say anything about providing those outside entities with health information drawn from its apps, nor does it mention Facebook as a provider.

Bojan Bostjancic, the company’s CEO, said in an email message that it uses Facebook analytics to analyze its users’ behavior in the app, and that it discloses the use of third parties in its privacy policy. He didn’t respond to follow-up questions.

After being contacted by the Journal, Breethe Inc., maker of a meditation app of the same name, stopped sending Facebook the email address each user used to log in to the app, as well as the full name of each meditation completed.

“Clearly, Facebook’s business model is unique and, unfortunately, we were not as diligent in aligning our data management with their privacy policy as we should have been,” said Garner Bornstein, the company’s co-founder.

In the European Union, the processing of some sensitive data, such as health or sexual information, is more tightly regulated. The EU’s new privacy law usually requires companies to secure explicit consent to collect, process or share such data—and making consent a condition of using a service usually isn’t valid.

Some privacy experts who reviewed the Journal’s findings said the practices may be in violation of that law. “For the sensitive data, companies basically always need consent—likely both the app developer and Facebook,” said Frederik J. Zuiderveen Borgesius, a law professor at Radboud University in the Netherlands.

The Facebook spokeswoman said the company is in compliance with the EU privacy law.

A Las Vegas monorail with a Google advertisement passes an Apple billboard about privacy.Photo: robyn beck/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

Facebook allows users to turn off the company’s ability to use the data it collects from third-party apps and websites for targeted ads. There is currently no way to stop the company from collecting the information in the first place, or using it for other purposes, such as detecting fake accounts. Germany’s top antitrust enforcer earlier this month ordered Facebook to stop using that data at all without permission, a ruling Facebook is appealing.

Under pressure over its data collection, Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg said last year that the company would create a feature called “Clear History” to allow users to see what data Facebook had collected about them from applications and websites, and to delete it from Facebook. The company says it is still building the technology needed to make the feature possible.

Data drawn from mobile apps can be valuable. Advertising buyers say that because of Facebook’s insights into users’ behavior, it can offer marketers better return on their investment than most other companies when they seek users who are, say, exercise nuts, or in the market for a new sports car. Such ads fetch a higher cost per click.

That is partly why Facebook’s revenue is soaring. Research firm eMarketer projects that Facebook this year will account for 20% of the $333 billion world-wide digital-advertising market.

In a call to discuss the company’s most recent earnings, however, Chief Financial Officer David Wehner noted that investors should be aware that Apple and Google could possibly tighten their privacy controls around apps. That possibility, he said, is “an ongoing risk that we’re monitoring for 2019.”

—Mark Secada, Yoree Koh and Kirsten Grind contributed to this article.​




To get around the wsj paywall, copy the above address and put it into this website

Hey presto!
 
Facebook admits using two-factor phone numbers to target ads
​
Facebook has admitted that it uses the phone number provided by users for two-factor authentication (2FA) to target them with ads. Naturally, its repurposing of information passed on for security purposes to make more ad dollars is causing quite the stir, with users lambasting its tactics on social media. Facebook's acknowledgement comes in the wake of a Gizmodo report that exposed the practice.

"We use the information people provide to offer a better, more personalized experience on Facebook, including ads," a Facebook spokesperson said in a statement to TechCrunch. "We are clear about how we use the information we collect, including the contact information that people upload or add to their own accounts. You can manage and delete the contact information you've uploaded at any time."

Last year, Facebook began giving users more 2FA alternatives beyond a code sent to your phone, including USB key support, followed by the ability to use third-party authenticator apps in May. Users may have opted for those methods over supplying their phone number if they knew what Facebook was up to. The company also came under fire in February for spamming 2FA phone numbers with codes. It blamed that on a bug.​

https://www.engadget.com/2018/09/28/facebook-two-factor-phone-numbers-ads/



Facebook lets people find you by your two-factor
phone number and you can't stop it​

Your Facebook account is teeming with personal data and you should be doing everything you can to protect it. That's why Facebook lets you set up two-factor authentication (2FA). What you might not know is that 2FA could be weakening your Facebook privacy settings.

Facebook gives you a few different ways to utilize 2FA. You can pair a FIDO U2F hardware key. You can use an authenticator app to generate single-use codes. You can also have Facebook send those codes to you via text message.

It's that last option that privacy-minded Facebook users want to avoid. As reported by TechCrunch, if you set up a phone number to use with Facebook's two-factor authentication system people will be able to search for you by that phone number.

No big deal, right? Well, there's a catch. Most other spots where you might enter your phone number on Facebook can be blocked from prying eyes. That's not the case with your two-factor phone number. There's no setting that lets you hide it completely from other Facebook users.

Your 2FA number can be hidden on your profile, but it's still searchable. One scenario TechCrunch mentions is automated contact matching from your phone's address book.

That may not be a huge issue on the surface -- there's a very good chance you know most of the people who have the phone number you use for 2FA stored in their phones. The real issue is that Facebook is misusing your information.​




Facebook Uses Two-Factor Authentication Phone Numbers
to Help Users Find You
​
Facebook's promises are getting harder and harder to believe. Despite telling people that phone numbers used for two-factor authentication (2FA) wouldn't be used for anything else, it's been revealed that the company also uses those numbers to help Facebook users find people's accounts, and there's no way to prevent that process.

We already knew that Facebook had lied about only using phone numbers gathered via 2FA setup for security purposes: researchers discovered in September 2018 that Facebook used those numbers to inform targeted advertisements. This wasn't disclosed to users.

But the ability to find someone's Facebook account with their phone number was only publicized Friday by Jeremy Burge, chief emoji officer at Emojipedia, an emoji reference website. He explained in a series of tweets that Facebook lets its users decide if their phone numbers can be used this way by everyone, friends of friends, or friends. There's no opting out.

Worse still is the fact that this option is set to "everyone" by default. At this point, it's not clear how Facebook's decision to stop using phone numbers in its search results benefited users, since this new feature essentially does the same thing.

Facebook also apparently shares numbers used for 2FA with its other services. Burge shared a screenshot of Instagram, which Facebook owns, asking him to confirm a phone number that he only shared with Facebook to set up 2FA on an account. Numbers are also shared with WhatsApp, another Facebook property, the whistleblower said.

Plus, Facebook's reportedly looking to merge the back-end of all these services.​

 
Link to Zuckerburgs letter :





MIT Technology Review article on Zuckerbergs letter :


Zuckerberg’s new privacy essay shows why Facebook needs to be broken up​


Mark Zuckerberg doesn’t understand what privacy means—he can’t be trusted to define it for the rest of us.


In a letter published when his company went public in 2012, Mark Zuckerberg championed Facebook’s mission of making the world “more open and connected.” Businesses would become more authentic, human relationships stronger, and government more accountable. “A more open world is a better world,” he wrote.

Facebook’s CEO now claims to have had a major change of heart.

In “A Privacy-Focused Vision for Social Networking,” a 3,200-word essay that Zuckerberg posted to Facebook on March 6, he says he wants to “build a simpler platform that’s focused on privacy first.” In apparent surprise, he writes: “People increasingly also want to connect privately in the digital equivalent of the living room.”

Zuckerberg’s essay is a power grab disguised as an act of contrition. Read it carefully, and it’s impossible to escape the conclusion that if privacy is to be protected in any meaningful way, Facebook must be broken up.

Facebook grew so big, so quickly that it defies categorization. It is a newspaper. It is a post office and a telephone exchange. It is a forum for political debate, and it is a sports broadcaster. It’s a birthday-reminder service and a collective photo album. It is all of these things—and many others—combined, and so it is none of them.

Zuckerberg describes Facebook as a town square. It isn’t. Facebook is a company that brought in more than $55 billion in advertising revenue last year, with a 45% profit margin. This makes it one of the most profitable business ventures in human history. It must be understood as such.

Facebook has minted money because it has figured out how to commoditize privacy on a scale never before seen. A diminishment of privacy is its core product. Zuckerberg has made his money by performing a sort of arbitrage between how much privacy Facebook’s 2 billion users think they are giving up and how much he has been able to sell to advertisers. He says nothing of substance in his long essay about how he intends to keep his firm profitable in this supposed new era. That’s one reason to treat his Damascene moment with healthy skepticism.

“Frankly we don’t currently have a strong reputation for building privacy protective services,” Zuckerberg writes. But Facebook’s reputation is not the salient question: its business model is. If Facebook were to implement strong privacy protections across the board, it would have little left to sell to advertisers aside from the sheer size of its audience. Facebook might still make a lot of money, but they’d make a lot less of it.

Zuckerberg’s proposal is a bait-and-switch. What he’s proposing is essentially a beefed-up version of WhatsApp. Some of the improvements might be worthwhile. Stronger encryption can indeed be useful, and a commitment to not building data centers in repressive countries is laudable, as far as it goes. Other principles that Zuckerberg puts forth would concentrate his monopoly power in worrisome ways. The new “platforms for private sharing” are not instead of Facebook’s current offering: they’re in addition to it. “Public social networks will continue to be very important in people’s lives,” he writes, an assertion he never squares with the vague claim that “interacting with your friends and family across the Facebook network will become a fundamentally more private experience.”​

More on link below :

 
Facebook employees had access to millions of user passwords

​
KEY POINTS
  • The company releases a statement Thursday saying it would be notifying those affected in the near future.
  • The incident may have affected between 200 million and 600 million customers and has been ongoing since 2012, according to the report by cybersecurity journalist Brian Krebs.

Facebook stored up to 600 million user account passwords without encryption and viewable as plain text to tens of thousands of company employees, according to a report Thursday by cybersecurity journalist Brian Krebs.

Facebook confirmed the report in a blog post. Facebook shares were down less than 1 percent Thursday. The Irish Data Protection Commission, which administers the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR, also said Thursday that Facebook had reached out over the issue: “We are currently seeking further information,” the commission said in a statement.


The 600 million users represents a significant portion of Facebook’s user base of 2.7 billion people. The company said Thursday it planned to start notifying those affected so they could change their passwords.

“As part of a routine security review in January, we found that some user passwords were being stored in a readable format within our internal data storage systems,” Facebook said in a statement. “This caught our attention because our login systems are designed to mask passwords using techniques that make them unreadable. We have fixed these issues and as a precaution we will be notifying everyone whose passwords we have found were stored in this way.”

Facebook’s blog post did not say how many users were affected.

The incidents date back to as early as 2012, according to the report. A Facebook software engineer named Scott Renfro was quoted by Krebs as saying the company hasn’t found any misuse of the data in question and that “there was no actual risk that’s come from this.”

Facebook, however, has been under intense scrutiny due to several years of privacy and security scandals that have earned the company criticism from customers and inquiries and fines from several regulatory agencies, particularly in the European Union.


But Facebook’s scandals haven’t significantly dented the company’s count of active daily users, which rose last quarter despite an extended social media campaign by Facebook critics encouraging privacy-minded customers to delete their accounts.​

 
Facebook Is Just Casually Asking Some New Users For Their Email Passwords

Facebook has been prompting some users registering for the first time to hand over the passwords to their email accounts, the Daily Beast reported on Wednesday—a practice that blares right past questionable and into “beyond sketchy” territory, security consultant Jake Williams told the Beast.

A Twitter account using the handle @originalesushi first posted an image of the screen several days ago, in which new users are told they can confirm their third-party email addresses “automatically” by giving Facebook their login credentials. The Beast wrote that the prompt appeared to trigger under circumstances where Facebook might think a sign-up attempt is “suspicious,” and confirmed it on their end by “using a disposable webmail address and connecting through a VPN in Romania.”
Click to expand...

Unbelievable. Facebook now wants access to people's email passwords? The arrogance and audaciousness of this company is staggering. All they want is your personal information so they can sell you like a product to advertisers.
 
Millions of Facebook records were exposed
on public Amazon server
​

Security researchers found the Facebook data on an unprotected server, including 22,000 passwords stored in plain text.

A treasure trove of Facebook data containing more than 540 million records was exposed online in a public database, security researchers from UpGuard said Wednesday.

The data contained extensive details, including people's comments, likes, names and Facebook IDs. It had been collected by two third-party Facebook apps.

"Facebook's policies prohibit storing Facebook information in a public database. Once alerted to the issue, we worked with Amazon to take down the databases. We are committed to working with the developers on our platform to protect people's data," a Facebook spokesperson said in a statement.

In the incident revealed Wednesday, the databases resided on Amazon cloud servers without any protection, and came from a Mexico-based media company called Cultura Colectiva, as well as another app, called At the Pool.

UpGuard said it notified Cultura Colectiva in January and hasn't received a response. The security researchers also reached out to Amazon to secure the database, and the retail giant did not take action. The database wasn't secured until Wednesday morning, when Bloomberg, which reported the story first, reached out to Facebook.

Amazon didn't respond to a request for comment.

The massive social network has suffered multiple security lapses over the last month alone. It announced, for instance, that it had inadvertently stored passwords of hundreds of millions of people in plain text. It also was caught requesting people's passwords to their personal emails when they were signing up for new accounts, a verification method it had used for several years and stopped using this week.​




This sums it up :

So just the last 10 days we learnt that :

1. 600 Millions passwords were stored I plaintext by Facebook and thousands of employees could access it.

2. They were found guilty of housing discrimination due to targeted ads.

3. They erased the past communication of Zuckerberg and the press release that is no longer in line with their current business

4. They demand new users to give them their email account password 5. A huge part of their data was in a public database and anyone could access it.



Facebook keeps data on everyone even if there hasn't been a Facebook account made directly by that person, so you can bet they'll be keeping your data after you close your account.

Shadow accounts exist, pieced together by data scraped from friends and friends-of-friends allowing Facebook access to their contact lists, calendars, photos, everything.

Facebook originally claimed these shadow/phantom profiles didn't exist but previous incidents have led this collected data to be leaked and Zuckerburg himself came out April 2018 quasi-admitting their existence to congress. Facebook has even been so bold as to try and make deals to collect patient data from hospitals.

​
 
Facebook launched their own crypto today.....

:laugh::laugh::laugh::laugh:

fct6pcs554531.jpg
 
I can tell you that in my little social media ecosystem, people are getting entirely sick of the censoriousness and bias on twitter, yoootooob and facebook.

As soon as the are viable alternatives, these platforms will go straight down rhe shxt chute... and viability is probably only a matter of critical mass.
 
Facebook is secretly using your iPhone’s camera
as you scroll your feed
​
iPhone owners, beware. It appears Facebook might be actively using your camera without your knowledge while you’re scrolling your feed.

The issue has come to light after a user going by the name Joshua Maddux took to Twitter to report the unusual behavior, which occurs in the Facebook app for iOS. In footage he shared, you can see his camera actively working in the background as he scrolls through his feed.

Maddux adds he found the same issue on five iPhone devices running iOS 13.2.2, but was unable to reproduce it on iOS 12. “I will note that iPhones running iOS 12 don’t show the camera (not to say that it’s not being used),” he said.

The findings are consistent with our own attempts. While iPhones running iOS 13.2.2 indeed show the camera actively working in the background, the issue doesn’t appear to affect iOS 13.1.3. We further noticed the issue only occurs if you have given the Facebook app access to your camera. If not, it appears the Facebook app tries to access it, but iOS blocks the attempt.​
​

​
 
Facebook fails to convince lawmakers it needs
to track your location at all times
​
  • In response to a letter from Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., and Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., Facebook explained why it tracks users’ locations even when their tracking services are turned off.
  • The lawmakers now say Facebook should give users more control over their data.
  • Facebook said it used location data to target ads and for certain security functions.

Facebook told two senators why it tracks users’ locations even when their tracking services are turned off. The lawmakers now say Facebook should give users more control over their data.

Facebook was responding to an inquiry from Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., and Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., who asked Facebook last month to “respect” users’ decisions to keep their locations private. In a letter dated December 12 that was released Tuesday, Facebook explained how it is able to estimate users’ locations used to target ads even when they’ve chosen to reject location tracking through their smartphone’s operating system.

Facebook said that even when location tracking is turned off, it can deduce users’ general locations from context clues like locations they tag in photos as well as their devices’ IP addresses. While this data is not as precise as Facebook would collect with location tracking enabled, the company said it uses the information for several purposes, including alerting users when their accounts have been accessed in an unusual place and clamping down on the spread of false information.

Facebook acknowledged it also targets ads based on the limited location information it receives when users turn off or limit tracking. Facebook doesn’t allow users to turn off location-based ads, although it does allow users to block Facebook from collecting their precise location, the company wrote.

“By necessity, virtually all ads on Facebook are targeted based on location, though most commonly ads are targeted to people with a particular city or some larger region,” the company wrote. “Otherwise, people in Washington, D.C. would receive ads for services or events in London, and vice versa.”

Hawley, a frequent tech critic, tweeted the letter, saying it showed Facebook “admits it. Turn off ‘location services’ and they’ll STILL track your location to make money (by sending you ads). There is no opting out. No control over your personal information. That’s Big Tech. And that’s why Congress needs to take action.”​


More on link below...


 
Stephen King quits Facebook over concerns
of 'false information'
​
"I'm quitting Facebook," the author said on Twitter Friday. "Not comfortable with the flood of false information that's allowed in its political advertising, nor am I confident in its ability to protect its users' privacy. Follow me (and Molly, aka The Thing of Evil) on Twitter, if you like."

His Facebook profile has since been deleted.

King, who has written more than 50 books, is best known for his works in the horror and fantasy genres, many of which have been adapted into films and television programs.

However, the 72-year-old is politically active and very outspoken, especially regarding his views on US President Donald Trump. And when it comes to Facebook, King isn't much of a fan of it either.
Facebook has been met with increasing scrutiny for allowing politicians to run false ads.​


 
Facebook tried to buy controversial tool to spy on iPhone users, court filing reveals
​

Over the last few years, Facebook has had a slew of privacy and security blunders and more details about one of them have come to light through a new court filing as the social media company is suing the spyware company NSO Group. It turns out Facebook tried to buy controversial government spyware to monitor iPhone and iPad users.

Reported by Motherboard, when Facebook was starting to build its spyware cloaked in a VPN product, Onavo Protect for iOS and Android, the social media company reached out to the controversial company NSO Group that creates spyware for government agencies.

A declaration from NSO Group’s CEO, Shalev Hulio revealed that “two Facebook representatives approached NSO in October 2017 and asked to purchase the right to use certain capabilities of Pegasus.”

Further documentation in the lawsuit revealed that:

it seems the Facebook representatives were not interested in buying parts of Pegasus as a hacking tool to remotely break into phones, but more as a way to more effectively monitor phones of users who had already installed Onavo.​

And in particular, Facebook thought Pegasus would give it an advantage in spying on iPhone and iPad users as Apple devices are more difficult to compromise than Android ones.

“The Facebook representatives stated that Facebook was concerned that its method for gathering user data through Onavo Protect was less effective on Apple devices than on Android devices,” the court filing reads. “The Facebook representatives also stated that Facebook wanted to use purported capabilities of Pegasus to monitor users on Apple devices and were willing to pay for the ability to monitor Onavo Protect users.”​

NSO declined to sell Pegasus to Facebook, but it still built and launched Onavo without Pegasus as a spyware tool in early 2018 under the misleading pretense of being a VPN app.

Apple made Facebook remove Onavo Protect from the App Store in August of 2018.

Then in 2019 Facebook repackaged it as a “Research app” and tried to pay teens to sideload it on their devices.

The Research app was shut down as well and Facebook finally shutdown Onavo completely in February 2019
​

 
I assume most people know that Facebook owns Whatsapp and Instagram?




WhatsApp Will Delete Your Account If You Don't Agree Sharing Data
With Facebook
​

"Respect for your privacy is coded into our DNA," opens WhatsApp's privacy policy. "Since we started WhatsApp, we've aspired to build our Services with a set of strong privacy principles in mind."​
​
But come February 8, 2021, this opening statement will no longer find a place in the policy.​
​
The Facebook-owned messaging service is alerting users in India of an update to its terms of service and privacy policy that's expected to go into effect next month.​
​
The "key updates" concern how it processes user data, "how businesses can use Facebook hosted services to store and manage their WhatsApp chats," and "how we partner with Facebook to offer integrations across the Facebook Company Products."​
​
The mandatory changes allow WhatsApp to share more user data with other Facebook companies, including account registration information, phone numbers, transaction data, service-related information, interactions on the platform, mobile device information, IP address, and other data collected based on users' consent.​
​
Unsurprisingly, this data sharing policy with Facebook and its other services doesn't apply to EU states that are part of the European Economic Area (EEA), which are governed by the GDPR data protection regulations.​
​
The updates to WhatsApp terms and privacy policy come on the heels of Facebook's "privacy-focused vision" to integrate WhatsApp, Instagram, and Messenger together and provide a more coherent experience to users across its services.​
​
Users failing to agree to the revised terms by the cut-off date will have their accounts rendered inaccessible, the company said in the notification.​
​
WhatsApp's Terms of Service was last updated on January 28, 2020, while its current Privacy Policy was enforced on July 20, 2020.​
​
Facebook Company Products refers to the social media giant's family of services, including its flagship Facebook app, Messenger, Instagram, Boomerang, Threads, Portal-branded devices, Oculus VR headsets (when using a Facebook account), Facebook Shops, Spark AR Studio, Audience Network, and NPE Team apps.​
​
It, however, doesn't include Workplace, Free Basics, Messenger Kids, and Oculus Products that are tied to Oculus accounts.​
​
WhatsApp's revised policy also spells out the kind of information it gathers from users' devices: hardware model, operating system information, battery level, signal strength, app version, browser information, mobile network, connection information (including phone number, mobile operator or ISP), language and time zone, IP address, device operations information, and identifiers (including identifiers unique to Facebook Company Products associated with the same device or account).​
​
"Even if you do not use our location-related features, we use IP addresses and other information like phone number area codes to estimate your general location (e.g., city and country)," WhatsApp updated policy reads.​




 

The way millions of Australians use Facebook is OVER as the tech giant bans posting and sharing of all NEWS from the social media platform - after Google made deals with media​

  • Facebook will no longer allow people in Australia to read or share news
  • The decision means Australians can't read or share any news on Facebook
  • The move is a response to the country's proposed Media Bargaining law
  • Comes after politicians threatened to force tech companies to pay for content
www.dailymail.co.uk

Facebook BANS Australians from viewing news on social media platform

The move is in response to the country's proposed Media Bargaining law, which forces tech companies like Facebook and Google to negotiate with news providers to feature their content.
www.dailymail.co.uk www.dailymail.co.uk


No great loss as most of MSM news is fake.

Will Aussies owning Facebook shares dump them now? Swap them for Google shares?
 
News organisations should be thanking Facebook and Google for the free traffic. This proposed Media Bargaining law is just a heavy handed way to force Facebook and Google to subsidise old media companies such as Fairfax and News Corp. who are becoming increasingly unprofitable and irrelevent.

I will happily take all the free traffic these ungrateful corporations do not want. This law seems ludicrous to me and I don't blame Google and Facebook for standing firm. If news websites thought it was bad before, just wait and see how bad it gets after Facebook and Google stop sending them traffic.
 

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