Thanks to one more third-party app gaffe, data of 3 million Facebook users has gone public. The data was collected for a project at the University of Cambridge.
The researchers the University of Cambridge had uploaded the user data onto a shared portal. While they had locked the data with a username and password, the login credentials were accidentally posted online. A report by New Scientists suggests that this goof-up has led to the exposure of 3 million Facebook user data.
If the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica controversy was not enough, this new incident has gathered more eyes towards Facebook’s privacy policies. Researchers affiliated with the University of Cambridge are being criticized for putting the data onto a shared web portal. Even the data of 87 million Facebook users collected by Cambridge Analytica was published online.
Cambridge University researchers collected a different set of user data with their consent. The data was collected using an app called myPersonality, which a personality quiz app. The university researchers accessed the data using login credentials. Researchers that had access to the data posted username and password on GitHub about four years ago.
While the data is anonymized, according to privacy experts, it’s quite easy to associate it with the person who originally posted it on Facebook. David Stillwell, one of the Cambridge University researcher said that a professor the University of Michigan posted the login credentials on GitHub.
Kim Broekhuizen, a spokeswoman of the University of Michigan said, “In connection with a faculty member's class, a group of three students was provided access to the database for purposes of collaborating on a research-focused class project. The Terms of Use, which state that the data had been anonymized, specifically allowed the faculty member to share data with students in the faculty member's research group.”
The myPersonality app did not collect any information Facebook user’s profile or their friends’ profiles. It merely collected the data that was entered in the app by users. Psychometrics Center of University of Cambridge said, “No app developed by the Psychometrics Centre has ever obtained Facebook profile information its users' friends.”
Facebook had suspended the myPersonality app on April 7th. The company is aware that the login credentials were posted on GitHub. Ime Archibong, Facebook’s VP of product partnership said, “We suspended the myPersonality app almost a month ago because we believe that it may have violated Facebook's policies. We are currently investigating the app, and if myPersonality refuses to cooperate or fails our audit, we will ban it."