Following a backlash after reports of a breach by Cambridge Analytica, a political data firm that worked on President Trump’s 2016 campaign, Facebook has issued an apology and promised to take more stringent steps to protect the data of people on its platform.
The company is also reacting to public anger which was expressed in form of the hashtag #DeleteFacebook on Twitter within a two-hour period on Wednesday. The hashtag was mentioned 40,398 times and retweeted over 10,000 according to Digimind, an analytics firm.
In a statement published on its platform on Wednesday, Facebook founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg called the incident that involved Cambridge Analytica (CA) a “breach of Facebook’s trust,” and a breach of the trust people place in the organisation to safeguard their data when they share it.
“I started Facebook, and at the end of the day I’m responsible for what happens on our platform,” Mark Zuckerberg said in a Facebook post. “I’m serious about doing what it takes to protect our community.”
In 2013, a Cambridge researcher named Aleksandr Kogan created a personality quiz app ‘This is Your Digital Life’ that was installed by about 300,000 people who shared their data as well as some of their friend’s data. The app was able to harvest nearly 30 million US Facebook users’ details.
In an interview on Wednesday, Kogan said Cambridge Analytica approached him to do the work without revealing what use they will be applying the data collected.
“We were assured by Cambridge Analytica that everything was perfectly legal within the terms of service,” he said.
Meanwhile, Facebook said it is taking a series of steps to ensure the incident never occur again.
One of the steps requires review of the platform. Apps that have access to large amounts of information before Facebook changed its platform in 2014 to reduce data access will be investigated. Developers that misused personally identifiable information will be banned from Facebook.
Second, Facebook will inform people affected by apps that have misused their data. This includes building a way for people to know if their data might have been accessed via “This is Your Digital Life.”
Third, the company will turn off an app’s access to information of people that have not used them for three months.
Fourth, Facebook will be changing its login so that in the next version, the company can reduce the data that an app can request without app review to include name, profile photo and email address. Requesting any other data will require Facebook’s approval.
Fifth, the company plans to create more awareness for its user to take control of their data on the apps they use.
Finally, Facebook will provide incentives to people that are able to identify vulnerabilities or cases of data misuse by app developers.
“There is more work to do, and we will be sharing details in the coming weeks about additional steps we are taking to put people more in control of their data. Some of these updates were already in the works, and some are related to new data protection laws coming into effect in the EU. This week’s events have accelerated our efforts, and these changes will be the first of many we plan to roll out to protect people’s information and make our platform safer,” Facebook said in a statement.
