- Nov 5, 2011
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Facebook warns “most users” have had their data harvested by third-party apps
The company is closing off vulnerable loopholes to third-party apps — including some that seem long overdue.
vox.com/technology/: Facebook warns "most users" have had their data harvested by third-party apps
By Aja Romano @ajaromano Apr 5, 2018, 11:50am EDT
Facebook’s woes continue to mount in the midst of the Cambridge Analytica scandal. On Wednesday, in a lengthy post to its online newsroom, the company addressed numerous vulnerabilities in its API that could allow user data to be harvested by unscrupulous third-party app developers.
Among them was the revelation that “most people” on Facebook had their public profile data scraped by third-party apps. This vulnerability came through a key search functionality — the ability to find people by email and phone number — which had, until yesterday, allowed third-party apps to gather a large amount of public user profile information.
“Given the scale and sophistication of the activity we’ve seen,” Facebook’s chief technology officer Mike Schroepfer wrote, “we believe most people on Facebook could have had their public profile scraped in this way.“
Related
The Facebook data breach wasn’t a hack. It was a wake-up call.
In addition to this revelation, the company admitted on Wednesday that the total number of users affected by the Cambridge Analytica data scrape was much higher than previously reported. The total wasn’t 30 million, as originally reported in 2017, or 50 million, as reported last month, but might be potentially as high as 87 million. The vast majority of affected users were in the US.
...read MORE at the website...
The company is closing off vulnerable loopholes to third-party apps — including some that seem long overdue.
vox.com/technology/: Facebook warns "most users" have had their data harvested by third-party apps
By Aja Romano @ajaromano Apr 5, 2018, 11:50am EDT
Facebook’s woes continue to mount in the midst of the Cambridge Analytica scandal. On Wednesday, in a lengthy post to its online newsroom, the company addressed numerous vulnerabilities in its API that could allow user data to be harvested by unscrupulous third-party app developers.
Among them was the revelation that “most people” on Facebook had their public profile data scraped by third-party apps. This vulnerability came through a key search functionality — the ability to find people by email and phone number — which had, until yesterday, allowed third-party apps to gather a large amount of public user profile information.
“Given the scale and sophistication of the activity we’ve seen,” Facebook’s chief technology officer Mike Schroepfer wrote, “we believe most people on Facebook could have had their public profile scraped in this way.“
Related
The Facebook data breach wasn’t a hack. It was a wake-up call.
In addition to this revelation, the company admitted on Wednesday that the total number of users affected by the Cambridge Analytica data scrape was much higher than previously reported. The total wasn’t 30 million, as originally reported in 2017, or 50 million, as reported last month, but might be potentially as high as 87 million. The vast majority of affected users were in the US.
...read MORE at the website...
