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579067-facebook-privacy

Facebook is notwithstanding in impairment control mode following revelations that United kingdom of great britain and northern ireland-based consulting business firm Cambridge Analytica got its hands on contour data from millions of Facebook'southward users. Later on promising to reevaluate its privacy practices, Facebook has issued an update on numerous platform features. It also has a new approximate of how many users were afflicted past the profile harvesting, and it's much college than the initial estimates. Facebook says the personal info from 87 million profiles ended upward in Cambridge Analytica'south hands.

The initial news reports estimated that data from 50 million profiles had been handed over to Cambridge Analytica. In reality, information technology's much more. Still, Facebook is trying to casually gloss over that fact. The new count is at the bottom of Facebook'southward privacy update mail. The tally is based on how many users took the original survey and how many friends they had at the time.

While Facebook Itself didn't hand over any information to Cambridge Analytica, it has come under burn for allowing and then much data to be nerveless in the starting time identify. Almost 270,000 people took a personality exam on Facebook, authorizing the app to access their profile data. Nonetheless, getting access to a user's profile in those days likewise meant you lot could get data well-nigh all their friends. That's how 270,000 users ballooned to 87 million (well-nigh in the US). That information was provided to Cambridge Analytica, which was technically a violation of Facebook's policies.

Facebook has announced a tightening of several data APIs including events, groups, and pages. Because all of these features provide admission to the activities of multiple users, Facebook will now accept to corroborate any apps that want to connect. In the instance of groups, apps won't be able to access the member list at all. Facebook is changing the way search works as well. You won't be able to employ phone numbers or email addresses to detect people. Facebook says this makes it also easy to scrape public profile information using the search and account recovery tools.

The new blog post also addresses a more than recent controversy regarding Facebook's collection of phone telephone call data in Messenger and Facebook Low-cal apps. Facebook points out users did opt into this feature to connect to their existing contacts, but perhaps they didn't know what they were getting into. Facebook has deleted all existing call information, and in the future the contact matching features won't collect the full call logs.

Those of you still using Facebook should shortly see a feed popup reminding yous to check which apps take admission to your profile. Users who may have been affected by the Cambridge Analytica breach volition get a separate notification in the feed with additional information.

Now read: xx Best Tips to Stay Anonymous and Protect Your Online Privacy and PCMag'due south How to Download Your Facebook Information (and vi Surprising Things I Establish)