A Case Against the Peeping Tom Theory of Privacy
3 years, 10 months ago

A Case Against the Peeping Tom Theory of Privacy

Wired  

In an Apple commercial that was on heavy rotation last fall, people go around telling strangers intimate information about themselves. A beautiful woman informs a passerby, “My home is in 1,000 feet.” A man in a bathroom stall announces, “I’m currently reading an article titled ‘10 Ways to Keep Sweaty Hands From Holding You Back.’” Finally, you find out what it’s selling: Apple’s privacy protections. “It is our purpose to consider whether the existing law affords a principle which can properly be invoked to protect the privacy of the individual,” declared Louis D. Brandeis and Samuel D. Warren in their classic 1890 essay “The Right to Privacy.” Privacy, they argued, was part of “the more general right of the individual to be let alone.” That idea still animates how privacy is thought of in the 21st century. “We are prisoners of other people’s consent,” write Martin Tisné, the managing director of Luminate, and Marietje Schaake, the international policy director of the Cyber Policy Center. “Even if I refuse to use Facebook or Twitter or Amazon—the fact that everyone around me has joined means there are just as many data points about me to target.” As compelling as that Apple ad is, the Peeping Tom narrative doesn’t capture the collective dimension of data privacy.

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History of this topic

Facebook faces another user data leak, researchers reveal
7 months ago

Facebook faces another user data leak, researchers reveal

India TV News  

Cybersecurity researchers have reported an alleged data leak which involve at least one lakh users of Facebook which appeared on a data breach forum. The team from CyberPeace, a New Delhi-based non-profit organisation alleged that 1,00,000 lines of fresh user data from Facebook have surfaced on a data breach forum. “Facebook faces potential reputational damage due to concerns about data …

“Gross spectacle”: TikTok hearing on Capitol Hill goes off the rails into bizarre GOP racism
1 year, 9 months ago

“Gross spectacle”: TikTok hearing on Capitol Hill goes off the rails into bizarre GOP racism

Salon  

Facebook collects about as much data from underage users as TikTok does, and federal law enforcement agencies have almost limitless access to that data. When asked if he'd be willing to divest TikTok from ByteDance, its Chinese parent company, he responded: "American social media companies don't have a good track record with data privacy and user security. He also detailed …

Former Zuckerberg advisor: Facebook’s problem is its business model
3 years, 2 months ago

Former Zuckerberg advisor: Facebook’s problem is its business model

CNN  

Editor’s Note: This interview has been editing for length and clarity. New York CNN Business — Calls for increased regulation of Facebook continue to grow louder after leaked internal documents became public and whistleblower Frances Haugen’s testimony showed that the social media platform has repeatedly failed to rein hate speech and misinformation. On Friday, a consortium of 17 US news …

Facebook Papers: 6 big takeaways
3 years, 2 months ago

Facebook Papers: 6 big takeaways

CNN  

CNN Business — Facebook is no stranger to the limelight. In response to these documents a Facebook spokesperson told CNN, “The responsibility for the violence that occurred on January 6 lies with those who attacked our Capitol and those who encouraged them.” Global lack of support Internal Facebook documents and research shared as part of Haugen’s disclosures highlight gaps in …

Facebook papers: Huge trove of documents released from inside social network, showing struggle to keep control
3 years, 2 months ago

Facebook papers: Huge trove of documents released from inside social network, showing struggle to keep control

The Independent  

Sign up to our free weekly IndyTech newsletter delivered straight to your inbox Sign up to our free IndyTech newsletter Sign up to our free IndyTech newsletter SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy policy A huge trove of documents from inside Facebook has been released, showing the …

Five Key Takeaways From the Leaked Facebook Documents
3 years, 2 months ago

Five Key Takeaways From the Leaked Facebook Documents

Bloomberg  

Facebook has been struggling to attract younger users for more than a decade, and some senior employees are alarmed over the company’s inability to keep teens engaged. The documents provide rare, vivid insight into ways Facebook, under the guidance of Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg, created a Silicon Valley social media behemoth that -- while frequently posting lavish sales and …

FB whistleblower calls for regulation
3 years, 3 months ago

FB whistleblower calls for regulation

The Hindu  

A Facebook whistleblower went before U.S. lawmakers on Tuesday to push them to regulate the social media giant, after an outage hit potentially billions of users and highlighted global dependence on its services. She spoke to Senators less than a day after Facebook, its photo-sharing app Instagram and messaging service WhatsApp went offline for roughly seven hours, with “billions of …

Facebook allows VIP users to flout rules that other users have to follow, says report
3 years, 3 months ago

Facebook allows VIP users to flout rules that other users have to follow, says report

India Today  

Facebook seems to have different rules for different users especially if it is public figure, Facebook is apparently not very stern. The report states that Facebook runs a program called “XCheck”, which allows celebrities including actors, politicians and others to bypass the rules and guidelines that are followed by average users. The documents obtained by Wall Street Journal reveals that …

Signal Fires Straight At Facebook: They Aren’t Building Technology For You, It’s For Your Data
3 years, 8 months ago

Signal Fires Straight At Facebook: They Aren’t Building Technology For You, It’s For Your Data

News 18  

Signal is having a brilliant 2021. Signal believes that Facebook’s own tools can often reveal the truth about the “dimly concealed within complex, opaquely-rendered systems and fine print designed to be scrolled past.” Signal says they bought some Instagram ads and created multi-variant targeted ad designed to show users the personal data that Facebook collects about and sells access to. …

Explained | How Facebook’s recent data breach affect its users
3 years, 8 months ago

Explained | How Facebook’s recent data breach affect its users

The Hindu  

Facebook has suffered yet another data breach, only this time, private information from 533 million accounts have been leaked online. Even the company’s founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s private credentials are part of the larger leaked data set from 2019. Private information of users was primarily obtained by exploiting Facebook’s contact importer feature that allows users to find friends on …

Phone Numbers, Private Info of 500 Million Facebook Users Leaked, Company Says Issue Fixed in 2019
3 years, 9 months ago

Phone Numbers, Private Info of 500 Million Facebook Users Leaked, Company Says Issue Fixed in 2019

News 18  

A leaker says they are offering information on more than 500 million Facebook users – including phone numbers and other data – virtually for free. The database appears to be the same set of Facebook-linked telephone numbers that has been circulating in hacker circles since January and whose existence was first reported by tech publication Motherboard, according to Alon Gal, …

Facebook Data On More Than 500M Accounts Found Online
3 years, 9 months ago

Facebook Data On More Than 500M Accounts Found Online

News 18  

Details from more than 500 million Facebook users have been found available on a website for hackers. According to that publication, it has info from 106 countries including phone numbers, Facebook IDs, full names, locations, birthdates, and email addresses. In 2018, the social media giant disabled a feature that allowed users to search for one another via phone number following …

Apple CEO escalates battle with Facebook over online privacy
3 years, 11 months ago

Apple CEO escalates battle with Facebook over online privacy

Associated Press  

SAN RAMON, Calif. — Apple CEO Tim Cook fired off a series of thinly veiled shots at Facebook and other social media companies Thursday, escalating an online privacy battle pitting the iPhone maker against digital services that depend on tracking people to help sell ads. What are the consequences of seeing thousands of users join extremist groups and then perpetuating …

Amid WhatsApp Privacy Row and iOS 14 Security Prompt, Facebook Revamps 'Access Your Info' Tool
3 years, 11 months ago

Amid WhatsApp Privacy Row and iOS 14 Security Prompt, Facebook Revamps 'Access Your Info' Tool

News 18  

The Facebook group is hardly a stranger to persistent issues of privacy. After launching in 2018 in the aftermath of the Cambridge Analytics data scandal involving almost 87 million users, Facebook initially set up its user information access tool with two categories – Your Information, and Information About You. While the new Access Your Information interface is indeed easier to …

Facebook criticises Apple privacy policy, says 'it limits business' ability to run personalised ads'
4 years ago

Facebook criticises Apple privacy policy, says 'it limits business' ability to run personalised ads'

Firstpost  

Apple brushed aside Facebook’s attacks, saying that that it isn’t preventing people from being tracked if they so desire. Facebook is again pushing back on new Apple privacy rules for its mobile devices, this time saying in full-page newspaper ads that the social media giant is standing up for small businesses. In ads that ran in The New York Times, …

Apple says Facebook collects data without any regard for user privacy
4 years, 1 month ago

Apple says Facebook collects data without any regard for user privacy

India Today  

Apple has planned to push ahead with its planned launch of a new privacy feature despite objections from the advertising industry. In a letter to a coalition of privacy groups, Apple’s director of global privacy, Jane Horvath said that App Tracking Transparency that requires users to actively allow developers to track how they use other apps will still be launched. …

Facebook — The beleaguered king of social media
4 years, 4 months ago

Facebook — The beleaguered king of social media

The Hindu  

A recent article in The Wall Street Journal spoke of a political problem in Facebook’s India operations that hit home hard. Editorial | Data power: On Facebook and BJP India, as the biggest market for the company’s eponymous social media platform and its messaging utility WhatsApp, is widely exposed to the data-sucking machines that operate behind the friendly facades of …

Facebook users owed damages for privacy violations: Consumer watchdog
4 years, 6 months ago

Facebook users owed damages for privacy violations: Consumer watchdog

NL Times  

Consumers' association Consumentenbond and data privacy foundation DPS are starting a procedure to demand that Facebook compensate Netherlands users for violating their privacy. According to the watchdogs, Facebook users in the Netherlands deserve compensation because Facebook earned money off their private data without their knowledge or consent. According to the consumers' association, Facebook earned millions by selling users' private data …

All the Ways Facebook Tracks You—and How to Limit It
4 years, 11 months ago

All the Ways Facebook Tracks You—and How to Limit It

Wired  

It won't come as much of a surprise that Facebook tracks you on its platform—that's why it can resurface your birthday photos from five years ago—but you might not yet realize the scope and the depth of its tracking all across the internet. Facebook's tentacles stretch out across other websites and services, into the various apps you're using on your …

Documents show how Facebook harnessed user data
5 years, 2 months ago

Documents show how Facebook harnessed user data

The Hindu  

Leaked documents from a civil suit against Facebook show how the social network aimed to employ user data as a tool for bargaining and to manipulate competitors, NBC News reported on Wednesday. Some 7,000 pages of documents reveal how Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg and his team harnessed users’ personal information to reward partners by giving them preferential data, while depriving …

Facebook used user data as a weapon against rivals, offered it up as a sop to friends: Report
5 years, 2 months ago

Facebook used user data as a weapon against rivals, offered it up as a sop to friends: Report

Firstpost  

A trove of 7,000 pages of leaked documents shows exactly how Facebook leveraged user data against rivals. The documents were originally obtained by NBC from British investigative journalist Duncan Campbell, which shows how Facebook would reward favoured companies by giving them greater access to user data. The documents also highlighted that when a messaging app became popular and threatened Facebook’s …

Facebook privacy lawsuit to proceed, court calls its views on privacy 'so wrong'
5 years, 4 months ago

Facebook privacy lawsuit to proceed, court calls its views on privacy 'so wrong'

Firstpost  

Facebook argued that users suffered no “tangible” harm during the scandal. A federal judge on Monday ordered Facebook Inc to face most of a nationwide lawsuit seeking damages for letting third parties such as Cambridge Analytica access users’ private data, calling the social media company’s views on privacy “so wrong.” While dismissing some claims, US District Judge Vince Chhabria in …

400 million Facebook users' phone numbers LEAKED in privacy lapse
5 years, 4 months ago

400 million Facebook users' phone numbers LEAKED in privacy lapse

India TV News  

Phone numbers of as many as 400 million Facebook users have been leaked, news agency AFP quoted the US media as saying. According to technology news site TechCruch, an exposed server stored 419 million records on users across several databases - including 133 million US accounts, more than 50 million in Vietnam, and 18 million in Britain. Facebook user IDs …

Why Facebook’s new "privacy cop" is doomed to fail
5 years, 5 months ago

Why Facebook’s new "privacy cop" is doomed to fail

Salon  

The Federal Trade Commission issued its largest-ever fine, of US$5 billion, to Facebook for violating a 2011 privacy settlement in late July. More significantly, Facebook is required to have an “outside assessor” — a sort of privacy cop — to monitor the company’s handling of user data, along with following a few other corporate procedural requirements. That assessor could address …

Facebook set to pay $5 billion fine for privacy violations
5 years, 5 months ago

Facebook set to pay $5 billion fine for privacy violations

The Hindu  

The Federal Trade Commission is set to announce on Wednesday that Facebook has agreed to a sweeping settlement of significant allegations it mishandled user privacy and pay $5 billion, two people briefed on the matter said. Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg will have to certify every three months that the company is properly safeguarding user privacy, a person briefed on …

Facebook caught sharing private user data with telecom companies, phone makers: Report
5 years, 7 months ago

Facebook caught sharing private user data with telecom companies, phone makers: Report

Firstpost  

Facebook’s apps harvest and package eight different categories of information for use by 100 companies. The social media giant has been found to be offering private data of users to 100 different telecom companies and phone makers in 50 countries without their knowledge or consent. All this is allegedly being done through a corporate data-sharing programme announced by Facebook last …

Opinion | Facebook redesign: Revenue over privacy
5 years, 8 months ago

Opinion | Facebook redesign: Revenue over privacy

Live Mint  

It took about three years of privacy scandals for Facebook to initiate a move to rework its platform. At the company’s annual developer conference, F8, yesterday, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the “future is private” and he outlined a number of ways in which Facebook planned to help attain that future. While Facebook’s plan focuses on private communication and reducing public …

Facebook could have shown its commitment to privacy by rolling out this feature
5 years, 8 months ago

Facebook could have shown its commitment to privacy by rolling out this feature

Live Mint  

Facebook Inc. Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg stood on stage Tuesday at the company’s annual F8 conference in San Jose, California, in front of a giant screen sharing a simple message: “ The future is private." “It’s going to take time," Zuckerberg said of Facebook’s privacy-focused future. Secure messaging is also difficult to implement, and “there are a lot of …

Facebook being investigated for unauthorised storage of up to 1.5 million email IDs
5 years, 8 months ago

Facebook being investigated for unauthorised storage of up to 1.5 million email IDs

Firstpost  

Facebook said it may have “unintentionally uploaded” email contacts of up to 1.5 million new users New York Attorney General Letitia James said on Thursday she is investigating Facebook Inc’s unauthorised storage of up to 1.5 million Facebook users’ email contact databases, the latest privacy issue to affect the U.S. social media giant. Last week, Facebook said it may have …

Facebook staff had access to hundreds of millions of people’s passwords
5 years, 9 months ago

Facebook staff had access to hundreds of millions of people’s passwords

CNN  

New York CNN Business — Facebook is back with another mea culpa. This time, the company acknowledges that it mishandled sensitive passwords for hundreds of millions of its users, primarily those who use its Facebook Lite product. On Thursday, Facebook said it didn’t properly mask the passwords of hundreds of millions of its users and stored them as plain text …

Facebook hasn't done much to reduce data privacy fears post Cambridge Analytica scandal
5 years, 9 months ago

Facebook hasn't done much to reduce data privacy fears post Cambridge Analytica scandal

Firstpost  

It has been a year since the Cambridge Analytica expose burst into our consciousness, revealing how billionaire donor Robert Mercer managed to assemble a team of data experts to hack key elections. Facebook claims about 0.5 million Indians were potentially affected by the data leak and this was thanks to just 355 individuals downloaded the ’thisisyourdigitallife’ app and took the …

Mark Zuckerberg presents his vision for an integrated, privacy-focused platform
5 years, 10 months ago

Mark Zuckerberg presents his vision for an integrated, privacy-focused platform

Firstpost  

Mark Zuckerberg is back with another detailed outline of what he wants to do in the coming years. Not really, Facebook and Instagram are going nowhere Zuckerberg’s announcement of the new platform naturally put question marks over Instagram and Facebook, which are more public in nature. Securing data centres “Looking at the future of the internet and privacy, I believe …

Facebook’s plan to put ‘privacy first’ could create new problems
5 years, 10 months ago

Facebook’s plan to put ‘privacy first’ could create new problems

CNN  

New York CNN Business — For years, Mark Zuckerberg preached the value of people sharing more and more information online, with the mission of building what he often called a “more open and connected world.” For years, Facebook profited from that activity by collecting data and using it to lure advertisers. And yet, to the extent Zuckerberg actually makes good …

Facebook has been targeting politicians to lobby against data privacy laws: Report
5 years, 10 months ago

Facebook has been targeting politicians to lobby against data privacy laws: Report

Firstpost  

Social media giant, Facebook, has been trying to influence politicians across parts of the world into joining its lobbying campaign against data privacy laws. The internal documents revealed that Facebook’s secretive global lobbying operation was strategically laid out to tackle legislation which affected Facebook in any way, including data privacy — Europe’s GDPR legislation being a key area of focus. …

Zuckerberg's Composure Amid Congressional Scrutiny: A Glimpse into His Response
6 years, 8 months ago

Zuckerberg's Composure Amid Congressional Scrutiny: A Glimpse into His Response

Live Mint  

Mark Zuckerberg's composure and responses to congressional hearings have reassured investors despite facing criticism for his data practices. While some lawmakers expressed appreciation for his patient cooperation, others expressed more assertive views on expanded government regulation. Zuckerberg's performance boosted shares, with the stock gaining 1.3% to $167.11 at 2:58pm in New York Wednesday after rising 4.5% the day before.

Zuckerberg's Performance in Senate Testimony: Takeaways and Implications
6 years, 8 months ago

Zuckerberg's Performance in Senate Testimony: Takeaways and Implications

Live Mint  

Mark Zuckerberg's testimony before the Senate Judiciary and Commerce committees was marked by both challenges and moments of clarity. While he faced tough questions about Facebook's privacy policy, data collection practices, and the potential for misuse of its platform, he managed to defend his company's position and assure lawmakers that he is taking steps to address the issues raised. However, …

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