Assessing The Times When Facebook Violated User Privacy – Facebook Privacy Failures
Facebook Privacy is almost an oxymoron at this point. The social media giant Facebook is a leader in its sector, a hub for businesses of all sizes, a branch to connect family members and friends; and yet it is not bulletproof against data breaches and privacy violations. Did you know, Facebook Privacy is one of the highest searches for terms in the world right now!
Currently, Facebook has roughly 2.8 billion users and to put that into perspective there are almost 7.9 billion people in the world. It’s fair to say that a good chunk of the world’s population use Mark Zuckerberg’s platform on a regular basis. Regardless of why people use the platform, data is being exchanged constantly and Facebook Privacy is not always guaranteed.
Why Is Facebook Privacy Important?
Facebook Privacy is important because data is important. A company that can claim to protect your data to the death may also be the ones that have gaping holes in their data security. Any data breach is big news and ones that concern Facebook Privacy are no exception.
A History of Facebook Data Breaches
Facebook has had a myriad of data breaches that violate Facebook privacy guidelines; let’s take a look at just a few.
- In 2013, Facebook announced that due to a technical error; 6 million phone numbers and email addresses were exposed for a lengthy period of 24 hours.
- In 2018, 87 million user records were leaked through Cambridge Analytica. A quiz called “thisisyourdigitallife” collected data information from users on quiz participants friends lists to build psychological and personality profiles.
- In 2018, around 90 million user passwords were stolen after, yet another technical glitch allowed exploiters to access digital keys. Those digital keys allow someone to access user login information.
- To wrap up, with the biggest data breach to date, we have another 600 million passwords in 2019. This was a result of hundreds of millions of passwords being visible to employers through plaintext. While it was reported that the passwords were not accessible to anyone outside the company, it is by far the biggest data breach incident that undermines Facebook Privacy.
How Can You Stay Protected?
Across 2018 and 2019, Facebook had around 2,018,500,000 incidents of data breaches. That is over 2 billion cases of mishandling of user data which is phenomenal, unfortunate and should be held to a greater standard of scrutiny. It’s an important issue because Facebook Privacy shouldn’t be something swept under the run; it has to be tightened up, investigated and have systems in place to ensure people’s data is protected. Until then, you can never be too sure who might see your data.
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