Facebook-Cambridge Analytica row: New report confirms data of 37 million users may have been compromised

According to new information updated by Facebook's CTO Mike Schroepfer on its official blog, the company has revealed that more data (37 million more than previous estimates) may have been shared with political consultancy firm Cambridge Analytica. 

 

Schroepfer revealed in the blog the policy changes and permissions that the social network will update over the next few months.

 

 

Events API: Until today, people could grant an app permission to get information about events they host or attend, including private events. In the future, only apps we approve that agree to strict requirements will be allowed to use the Events API.

 

Groups API: Currently apps need the permission of a group admin or member to access group content for closed groups, and the permission of an admin for secret groups. Going forward, apps will no longer be able to access the member list of a group. And we’re also removing personal information, such as names and profile photos, attached to posts or comments that approved apps can access.

 

Pages API: Until today, any app could use the Pages API to read posts or comments from any Page.Going forward, Facebook will ensure that the Page information is only available to apps providing useful services to our community. So starting today, all future access to the Pages API will need to be approved by Facebook.

 

Facebook Login: Two weeks ago we announced important changes to Facebook Login. Starting today, Facebook will need to approve all apps that request access to information such as check-ins, likes, photos, posts, videos, events and groups.In the next week, we will remove a developer’s ability to request data people shared with them if it appears they have not used the app in the last 3 months.

 

Instagram Platform API: We’re making the recently announced deprecation of the Instagram Platform API effective today. You can find more information here.

 

Search and Account Recovery: Until today, people could enter another person’s phone number or email address into Facebook search to help find them. Given the scale and sophistication of the activity we’ve seen, we believe most people on Facebook could have had their public profile scraped in this way. So we have now disabled this feature. We’re also making changes to account recovery to reduce the risk of scraping as well.

 

Call and Text History: The company has reviewed this feature to confirm that it does not collect the content of messages — and will delete all logs older than one year. In the future, the client will only upload to our servers the information needed to offer this feature — not broader data such as the time of calls.

 

Data Providers and Partner Categories: The company has already announced its plans to shut down Partner Categories, a product that lets third-party data providers offer their targeting directly on Facebook.

 

App Controls: Starting next week, the company will show people a link at the top of their News Feed so they can see what apps they use — and the information they have shared with those apps. People will also be able to remove apps that they no longer want. As part of this process, we will also tell people if their information may have been improperly shared with Cambridge Analytica.