Facebook comes clean on sharing user data with third parties

Facebook comes make clean on sharing user data with third parties — yes, once more

(Epitome credit: SOPA Images / Getty)

Whoops — they did it again.

Facebook admitted yesterday (July i) that nearly v,000 tertiary-political party apps connected to access user data fifty-fifty past the 90-twenty-four hour period usage cutoff that Facebook itself set later the Cambridge Analytica scandal went public in 2018.

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"Recently, we discovered that in some instances apps connected to receive the information that people had previously authorized, even if it appeared they hadn't used the app in the concluding 90 days," wrote Konstantinos Papamiltiadis, VP of platform partnerships, in a company blog mail service.

"For example, this could happen if someone used a fitness app to invite their friends from their hometown to a workout, but nosotros didn't recognize that some of their friends had been inactive for many months," Papamiltiadis added.

To exist off-white, it sounds similar the third-party apps simply connected to get data that users had already authorized them to get, and no more. The types of data included gender, birthdates, preferred language and gender.

But the apps exceeded Facebook's own rule that apps should no longer receive user information if the user hasn't used the app in more than 90 days.

Papamiltiadis said Facebook "fixed the issue the 24-hour interval after nosotros found it," although he didn't say how "recently" the issue had been discovered, or how many Facebook users were affected.

Tom's Guide asked Facebook virtually those details, and nosotros were told that the problem was found two weeks ago. Regarding the numbers of users impacted, our Facebook contact said that was still being investigated.

We just hope that information technology doesn't accept Facebook executives once once more being summoned to give congressional testimony to acquire the full details.

The fact that sounds all-too-familiar demonstrates, once again sadly, that Facebook itself notwithstanding doesn't take the full movie of what'due south going ain in its own systems. That'southward bold Facebook has the best of intentions, which many jaded and skeptical Facebook users may not be willing to concede.

So what tin you exercise about this? Become into your Facebook settings — they're in the pulldown menu you run into if you click the upside-downwards triangle nearly the summit correct of your desktop Facebook screen — and go to Apps and Websites. If there are apps there that yous don't regularly utilise, remove them.

Or, y'all know, y'all could merely learn to live without Facebook and delete your account.

Paul Wagenseil is a senior editor at Tom's Guide focused on security and privacy. He has besides been a dishwasher, fry cook, long-booty driver, code monkey and video editor. He's been rooting around in the information-security space for more fifteen years at FoxNews.com, SecurityNewsDaily, TechNewsDaily and Tom's Guide, has presented talks at the ShmooCon, DerbyCon and BSides Las Vegas hacker conferences, shown upward in random Tv news spots and even moderated a panel word at the CEDIA dwelling house-technology conference. You tin can follow his rants on Twitter at @snd_wagenseil.