Facebook executives to face questions over Cambridge Analytica scandal at Oireachtas

Baser mentioned that even if a person does not have a Facebook account or is logged out of his account, the information is still collected by the web browser.

In exchange of that information, Facebook helps those services serve ads pertinent to accounts and analytics that paint a broader picture of how people use their apps. “We’ve got to fix that”, said Rep. Luján, referring to a process that forces non Facebook users to sign up for the service if they want to know what personal information the company has obtained. Google has a popular analytics service. “We also get information about which website or app you’re using, which is necessary to know when to provide our tools”. Describing how Facebook receives cookies, IP address, and browser info about users from other sites, he noted “when you see a YouTube video on a site that’s not YouTube, it tells your browser to request the video from YouTube”.

One of the more troubling aspects of the scandal is that Facebook couldn’t even determine how many users had their data accessed and where they were located. Tracking your location instructs it to display its content in a relevant language. Facebook released a blog post on April 4th stating that users will be notified of whether their “information may have been improperly shared with Cambridge Analytica“, and which other websites and businesses have access to their data. But Facebook’s business model, as Zuckerberg repeatedly explained in his testimony, depends upon ads shown to people based on the interests they share on the network. Given that “Like” buttons are prevalent across most sites on the internet and user data is extremely valuable to Facebook, it’s unlikely that this practice will stop anytime soon.

It’s tough to build if you think you’re building a weapon.

Calls for Facebook users to delete their account have intensified over recent weeks, but the company’s admission suggests that ditching the social network altogether won’t keep you out of Mark Zuckerberg and co’s line of sight.

As of February 2018, the top three mobile, social media apps are Facebook, Instagram (owned by Facebook) and Facebook Messenger, according to Statistica. That game you play or app you use also contains a lot of personal information.

Amid a flurry of criticism pointed towards Facebook and its creator, Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook introduced an option for users to download their personal data – the data that Facebook has been storing since you created your profile on the social media website. Last year, the unit touted a case study with i360, a marketing firm affiliated with the conservative power brokers Charles and David Koch. i360 uses its own data to slice online populations into segments, such as those for and against gun control and traditional marriage.

Facebook has been swamped by privacy concerns since it acknowledged last month that information about millions of users wrongly ended up in the hands of political consultancy Cambridge Analytica, which counted U.S. President Donald Trump’s 2016 electoral campaign among its clients. But two former Google ad executives said Facebook’s aggressive ad targeting moves also prompted the decision. Kaiser claimed the company had not been paid for the initial phase of work, which used UKIP data and was billed to UKIP.