Following last month’s rather shocking revelation, of the inappropriate sharing of 87 million Facebook users’ personal data, CEO and Founder of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, was summoned by US Congress during the week, and questioned for five hours on the data controversy.
Prior to that, however, Zuckerberg had taken to his page on Facebook to explain the situation of things to his users via his post.
Although Facebook had suspended the Cambridge Analytica, Kogan and Whylie from its platform Facebook suspension , the damage had already been done.
The personal data of Facebook users was initially obtained by a Russian American academic, Aleksandr Kogan, a professor at the University of Cambridge, using the information harvested from an app called “thisisyourdigitallife”, which offered a personality test that ran in 2014. The app was downloaded by about 270,000 people at the time. Facebook users who participated in this quiz granted permission to obtain information about their location, friends and likes.
According to Facebook, Kogan had breached the terms of service by sharing the information he gathered at the time to a UK-based political data firm. The firm, Cambridge Analytica, published a press release on Monday stating 10 facts to proof their legitimacy, and somewhat innocence.
A number of questions are still being asked by various Facebook users who are still unsure if their data was among those shared with Cambridge Analytica.
One of the questions which have been frequently asked has been “How can I tell if my info was shared with Cambridge Analytica?”
Facebook has put up a relatively comprehensive answer to this question How can I tell if my info was shared with Cambridge Analytica?
When asked by a Senator if Facebook permanently deletes information of users in a case where the user deletes his account, Mark said yes. Although this doesn’t happen automatically.
The company said that “Copies of some material (example: log records) may remain in our database but are disassociated from personal identifiers,”
During Mark’s 5 hours hearing on Tuesday when asked if his company sells information of their user he said: “We do not sell data to advertisers”.
The question which will only be answered by time is: “How trustworthy would Facebook be after this scandal?”
Meanwhile, you can follow the links if you want to find out the status of your Facebook account, as it relates to the Cambridge Analytica controversy.
Image Credit: ilgiornale.it