TechTalk: No Privacy- Facebook

— from David Johnson and Lisa Steckley —

Good news! Facebook and Cambridge Analytica are doing a good job educating people about the lack of privacy Facebook users have. If you haven’t seen the headlines this week, millions of detailed user information was Hoovered up from Facebook. And it wasn’t a hack. It was a clever trick to get people to open the doors to their own data AND THEIR FRIENDS’! The devil being in the fine print: In this case, 270,000 took a “fun” survey on Facebook. In the fine print of that survey, they agreed to allow all of their details and the details of anyone they were connected to be used by the survey provider. Viola — 50 million people (at least)! Oh, and with the Likes of those 50 million, all sorts of bait can be targeted to each individual.

Bottom line, if anyone of your friends took the survey bait, your data went with it. Or perhaps you accidentally handed over your family?

What to do? You can lock the doors, but it is going to take a bit. We will now turn to one of our favorite cyber news sites, Sophos Naked Security. Three key steps: check and lock your privacy settings, check and lock your app settings, and turn off the API. Don’t worry, this article spells it all out: https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2018/03/20/facebook-fallout-what-are-your-options/

Time well spent to protect your family and friends we think!

And for the details on the Hoover machine, here is good summary of how they did it: https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2018/03/19/facebook-loses-control-of-50-million-users-data-suspends-analytics-firm/