by admin | May 25, 2021 | Markets, Networking, Online Marketing, Social Media, Technology
San Francisco : Facebook entered into data-sharing partnership with 52 technology companies, including Chinese companies like Alibaba, Huawei, Lenovo and Oppo, the social networking giant said in its latest response to Energy and Commerce Committee of the US House of Representatives.
In its 747-page response to questions raised by the committee, Facebook said it had already ended partnerships with 38 of them with seven more due to expire in July and one more in October this year, Engadget reported on Saturday.
However, Facebook said that three partnerships – involving Apple, Amazon and Tobii, an accessibility app that enables people with ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis) to access Facebook – are due to continue beyond October this year.
Facebook said that it implemented tougher sharing controls in 2014 and gave third-party app developers one year of time to comply with the new rules.
However, 61 companies got as much as six months of extra time to wind down their data collection practices, the report said.
There are concerns Facebook has been using semantics to share data beyond a US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) consent decree requiring the site to obtain permission before collecting more data than a person’s privacy settings allow, the Engadget report said.
But in its new response, Facebook claimed that it was not violating the decree.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Markets, Networking, Social Media, Technology
San Francisco : Facebook has reportedly introduced a new feature, tentatively titled “Your Time On Facebook”, that would provide information about how much time users spent on the platform each day in a week, along with the average time spent on the site per day.
The new feature would offer users the option to set a daily time limit as well as a link to manage their Facebook notifications, TechCrunch reported late on Friday.
“We’re always working on new ways to help make sure people’s time on Facebook is time well spent,” a Facebook spokesperson was quoted as saying by TechCrunch.
Previously, companies such as Apple and Google have rolled out features to keep a tab on the time people spent on their computers and smartphones.
“This self-policing could be important since both iOS and Android are launching their own screen time monitoring dashboards that reveal which apps are dominating your attention and can alert you or lock you out of apps when you hit your time limit,” the report added.
According to the report, Facebook claimed that the feature is in development, although it would not say when or even if it would be launching for all users.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Markets, Social Media, Technology
San Francisco : Facebook is bullish on eye-tracking technology tools that will let the social media giant detect users’ eye movement and emotions but has denied using it at the moment, the media reported.
In a 229-page document addressed to US Congress in the wake of Cambridge Analytica data breach scandal, Facebook revealed that it had looked into building the technology, Fortune reported on Wednesday.
“Like many companies, we apply for a wide variety of patents to protect our intellectual property. Right now, we’re not building technology to identify people with eye-tracking cameras,” according to the document.
“If we implement this technology in the future, we will absolutely do so with people’s privacy in mind, just as we do with movement information.”
Facebook already has two patents titled “Dynamic eye tracking calibration” and “Techniques for emotion detection and content delivery”.
“Facebook is accused of violating user privacy by collecting data derived from Facebook users’ faces in photographs,” the report noted.
In new documents, the social networking giant has already admitted that it allows advertisers to target users based on their “interests” and “behaviours”.
When Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg appeared before the US Congress in April, he faced several questions from lawmakers. But his in-person testimony left them with several lingering questions.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Corporate, Corporate Reports, Markets, Networking, Social Media, Technology
Washington : In yet another bad day for Facebook, a Wall Street Journal report has claimed that the social networking giant provided select companies “customised data-sharing deals” that let them gain “special access to user records”.
According to the report citing court documents and unnamed sources, Facebook gave data access to some companies while “others were cut off”.
“Facebook Inc. struck customized data-sharing deals that gave select companies special access to user records well after the point in 2015 that the social network has said it walled off that information,” the report said on Friday.
These arrangements were known as “whitelists”, and allowed “certain companies to access additional information about a user’s Facebook friends”.
Companies like the Royal Bank of Canada and Nissan Motor reportedly made such deals with Facebook.
According to Ime Archibong, Facebook’s Vice President of Product Partnerships, the company allowed some firms to have “short-term extensions” to this user data.
“But other than that, things were shut down,” he told the Wall Street Journal.
In another privacy goof-up, Facebook on Thursday admitted that 14 million users were affected by a bug in May that automatically suggested posting publicly when the users were writing posts meant only for friends.
The bug made sure that the posts could be viewed by anyone, including people not logged on to Facebook. It was not yet known users in which country were affected the most.
The bug, according to Erin Egan, Chief Privacy Officer at Facebook, occurred as the Facebook developers were building a new way to share featured items on users’ profile, like a photo.
“The problem has been fixed, and for anyone affected, we changed the audience back to what they had been using before,” Egan said in a blog post late Thursday.
The revelation came after a New York Times report exposed how the social network allowed about 60 device makers, including Chinese smartphone players, to access personal information of users and their friends.
Facebook admitted sharing users’ data with Chinese company Huawei — facing the heat in the US over data privacy concerns — along with three other China-based smartphone makers Lenovo, OPPO and TCL.
Facebook is facing intense scrutiny for misuse of millions of its users’ data after the British political consultancy firm Cambridge Analytica data leak scandal became public.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Markets, Social Media, Technology
San Francisco : In yet another privacy goof-up, Facebook has admitted that 14 million users were affected by a bug in May that automatically suggested posting publicly when the users were writing posts meant only for friends.
The bug made sure that the posts could be viewed by anyone, including people not logged on to Facebook. It was not yet known users in which country were affected the most.
The bug, according to Erin Egan, Chief Privacy Officer at Facebook, occurred as the Facebook developers were building a new way to share featured items on users’ profile, like a photo.
“Since these featured items are public, the suggested audience for all new posts — not just these items — was set to public.
“The problem has been fixed, and for anyone affected, we changed the audience back to what they had been using before,” Egan said in a blog post late Thursday.
The revelation came after a New York Times report exposed how the social network allowed about 60 device makers, including Chinese smartphone players, to access personal information of users and their friends.
Facebook admitted sharing users’ data with Chinese company Huawei — facing the heat in the US over data privacy concerns — along with three other China-based smartphone makers Lenovo, OPPO and TCL.
The latest bug affected audience selector that lets users decide who gets to see the post.
Starting Thursday, “we have started letting the 14 million people affected know — and asking them to review any posts they made during that time.
“To be clear, this bug did not impact anything people had posted before, and they could still choose their audience just as they always have,” Egan said.
It took Facebook developers five days to fix the bug.
“If you posted publicly (during the period May 18 to 27), you’ll see a notification from Facebook when you log in that leads to a page with more information — including a review of posts during this period,” said Egan.
Every time you share something on Facebook, it shows you an audience selector so users can decide who gets to see the post.
For example, if you choose to share a photo with friends only, your audience selector will automatically suggest you share to friends next time you start a post.
“We’ve heard loud and clear that we need to be more transparent about how we build our products and how those products use your data — including when things go wrong,” Egan said.
Facebook is already under intense scrutiny for misuse of millions of its users’ data after the Cambridge Analytica data leak scandal became public.
—IANS
