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If you found yourself logged out of Facebook this morning, you were in good company. Facebook forced more than 90 million Facebook users to log out and back into their accounts Friday morning in response to a massive data breach . According to Facebook’s announcement , it detected earlier this week that attackers had hacked a feature of Facebook that could allow them to take over at least 50 million user accounts. At this point, information is scant: Facebook does...
Add “a phone number I never gave Facebook for targeted advertising” to the list of deceptive and invasive ways Facebook makes money off your personal information. Contrary to user expectations and Facebook representatives’ own previous statements, the company has been using contact information that users explicitly provided for security purposes—or that users never provided at all —for targeted advertising. A group of academic researchers from Northeastern University and Princeton University , along with Gizmodo reporters , have used real-world tests...
Data brokers intrude on the privacy of millions of people by harvesting and monetizing their personal information without their knowledge or consent. Worse, many data brokers fail to securely store this sensitive information, predictably leading to data breaches ( like Equifax ) that put millions of people at risk of identity theft, stalking, and other harms for years to come. Earlier this year, Vermont responded with a new law that begins the process of regulating data brokers. It demonstrates the...
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