Security News
Europe's physics lab CERN on Wednesday said it had stopped using a Facebook team-chat application because of concerns about handing over data to the US tech giant. CERN said it had wound up its Facebook Workplace account on January 31 after the US firm gave it the choice of either paying to use the service or sharing data.
Seven months after a crack formed in the keep-the-kids-safe bubble of Facebook's Messenger Kids chat app, it's beefing up the app's Parent Dashboard with new tools and letting parents read their kids' chat histories, see the most recent videos and photos they sent or received, and delete any content they find objectionable. Facebook is pulling kids into that "What are you doing with my data?" conversation: it's developed an in-app activity that educates them on what other people can see about them, such as that people they know may see their name and photo and that parents can see and download their messaging content.
A class-action lawsuit against Facebook for scanning a user's face in photos and offering tagging suggestions looks like it's finally done churning through the courts. The upshot: it will pay $550 million to settle the suit, Facebook disclosed in its quarterly earnings report on Wednesday.
Facebook has agreed to pay $550 million to settle a class action lawsuit alleging the company violated Illinois law in collecting data for a facial recognition tool without users' consent. The settlement - revealed by company executives during a Wednesday earnings call - came after Facebook failed this month in its efforts to get the U.S. Supreme court to throw out the lawsuit.
Those third parties send Facebook information about your activities including things like opening an app on your mobile, logging into it online using your Facebook ID, or even just visiting a site. This piece of Facebook code is known more generically as a web bug, and it logs your activities on any site that embeds it, sending that information back to Facebook.
Facebook has agreed to pay $550 million to Illinois users to settle a class action lawsuit filed over the use of its face-tagging technology to collect facial-recognition data on its social media platform. The suit stems from a class-action proceeding from Facebook users in Illinois over a feature called Tag Suggestions, which identifies Facebook users in photos based on biometric identification technology and suggests that they be "Tagged" in photos on someone else's profile based on that info.
Facebook uses many tools to track people across the Internet, whether they have an account with the social networking site or not, and most of them rely on the online activity data other apps and websites share with Facebook. After facing worldwide criticism over privacy and data breach controversies, Facebook last summer announced a privacy tool, called Off-Facebook Activity, which gives users more control of their data collected by Facebook.
Facebook said Tuesday a new tool allowing users of the social network to view and delete data it collects from third parties is rolling out to the estimated two billion members of the leading social network worldwide. Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said the tool offers "a new level of transparency and control" for the social network, which has been roiled by revelations in the past few years on how it collects and uses data.
Privacy advocates allege Ring goes so far as to silently deliver updates on Ring customer usage to Facebook, even if the Ring owner doesn't have a Facebook account. The EFF performed dynamic analysis on the Ring for Android mobile app, using the "Mitmproxy" tool running on a Wi-Fi access point connected to the doorbell.
Facebook and Instagram have just banned the service from their platform. According to the BBC, Facebook is so hostile to the Spinner that it's even sent the company a formal cease and desist.