Another Facebook-based application is in question for leaking Facebook data from its users. Recently, Facebook’s creator, Mark Zuckerberg, was thoroughly interrogated by the U.S. government with the same issue. Just recently, we published an article of Facebook suspending over 200 applications because of data misuse. Now, this happens.
In this instance, more than 3 million people are affected by the latest Facebook data information leak. Information acquired by an app called “myPersonality” became accessible to mostly everyone due to the lack of security provisions.
According to New Scientist, a London-based tech company, the quiz application has exposed personal information of over 3 million Facebook subscribers. The app that was developed by researchers from University of Cambridge has been completed over 6 million times by Facebook users and almost half of them agreed to share their Facebook data with the researchers.
The said profile data quiz results, with names removed, were allowed to be accessed by select researchers in and out of the university; even though the data was meant to be under restrictions. Users had to register as a collaborator to the project before getting into the profile information.
Those who weren’t able to get access to the data due to some restrictions but mostly due to their academic contracts, would still be able to get the information by doing workaround processes.
After getting into the data pool, they will be able to access the personality scores of almost 3 million users, access to more than 20 million status updates of the participants, and details such as age, gender, relationship status, likes, and so on.
Those who had involvements in the said project has yet to answer questions about the issue of the security breach. Their websites and Twitter accounts have gone offline and no statement has been out yet.
Other similar apps were suspended by Facebook for further investigation. The public is again being warned about providing sensitive information online, even if it is just for a simple personality test.
Data misuse and theft is a serious issue as it can be imperative information that can be used for different processes and researches. So as people, what do we need to do? We need to be safe of course. Facebook is fun for entertainment and is useful in terms of providing information and for spreading information. However, that’s not always the case. Since they are the ones handling our profiles, wouldn’t it be too obvious that they can access whatever they want from us?
