400 million Facebook users' phone numbers exposed in privacy lapse, reports say

WASHINGTON, United States — Phone numbers linked to more than 400 million Facebook accounts were listed online in the latest privacy lapse for the social media giant, US media reported Wednesday.

An exposed server stored 419 million records on users across several databases -- including 133 million US accounts, more than 50 million in Vietnam, and 18 million in Britain, according to technology news site TechCrunch.

The databases listed Facebook user IDs -- unique digits attached to each account -- the profiles' phone numbers, as well as the gender listed by some accounts and their geographical locations, technology website TechCrunch reported.


The server was not password protected, meaning anyone could access the databases, and remained online until late Wednesday when TechCrunch contacted the site's host.

Facebook confirmed parts of the report but downplayed the extent of the exposure, saying that the number of accounts so far confirmed was around half of the reported 419 million.

It added that many of the entries were duplicates and that the data was old.

"The dataset has been taken down and we have seen no evidence that Facebook accounts were compromised," a Facebook spokesperson told AFP.

Following the 2018 Cambridge Analytica scandal, when a firm used Facebook's lax privacy settings to access millions of users' personal details, the company disabled a feature that allowed users to search the platform by phone numbers.

The exposure of a user's phone number leaves them vulnerable to spam calls, SIM-swapping -- as recently happened to Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey -- with hackers able to force-reset the passwords of the compromised accounts.

source: philstar.com

Facebook data scandal

Facebook says it will end its data partnership with Huawei by the end of this week following a backlash over the Chinese phone maker's access to Facebook user data.

Huawei, a company flagged by U.S. intelligence officials as a national security threat, is the latest device maker at the center of a fresh wave of allegations over Facebook's handling of private data.

Facebook said earlier this week that Chinese firms Huawei, Lenovo, Oppo and TCL were among numerous handset makers that were given access to Facebook data in a "controlled" way approved by the social media giant.

Huawei said Wednesday it has never collected or stored Facebook user data. Huawei spokesman Joe Kelly said in a text message that the arrangement was about making Facebook services more convenient for users. — AP

source: philstar.com

Facebook cuts ties to data brokers in blow to targeted ads

Facebook Inc said on Wednesday it would end its partnerships with several large data brokers who help advertisers target people on the social network, a step that follows a scandal over how Facebook handles personal information.

The world’s largest social media company is under pressure to improve its handling of data after disclosing that information about 50 million Facebook users wrongly ended up in the hands of political consultancy Cambridge Analytica.

Facebook adjusted the privacy settings on its service on Wednesday, giving users control over their personal information in fewer taps.

Facebook has for years given advertisers the option of targeting their ads based on data collected by companies such as Acxiom Corp and Experian PLC.

The tool has been widely used among certain categories of advertisers – such as automakers, luxury goods producers and consumer packaged goods companies – who do not sell directly to consumers and have relatively little information about who their customers are, according to Facebook.


“While this is common industry practice, we believe this step, winding down over the next six months, will help improve people’s privacy on Facebook,” Graham Mudd, a Facebook product marketing director, said in a statement.

Shares in Acxiom traded down more than 10 percent to $25 after Facebook’s announcement after the bell. Shares in other data brokers were largely unchanged.

Acxiom said late on Wednesday it did not expect this change to impact its revenue or earnings for the year ending in March. The company currently expects revenue in the range of $910 million to $915 million in the 2018 fiscal year.

However, for the 2019 fiscal year, Acxiom expects total revenue and profitability to be negatively impacted by as much as $25 million.

Facebook declined to comment on how the change could affect its ad revenue.

Advertisers would still be able to use third-party data services to measure how well their ads performed by examining purchasing data, Facebook said.

Facebook’s website lists nine third-party data providers that it has worked with, including Acxiom, Experian, Oracle Data Cloud, TransUnion and WPP PLC.

Other companies, besides Acxiom, were not available for comment.

Facebook on Wednesday also put all its privacy settings on one page and made it easier to stop third-party apps from using personal information. Privacy settings had previously been spread over at least 20 screens, Facebook said.

Facebook said in a blog post it had been working on the updates for some time but sped things up to appease users’ anger over how the company uses data and as lawmakers around the globe call for regulation.

Facebook’s shares closed up 0.5 percent at $153.03 on Wednesday. They are still down more than 17 percent since March 16, when Facebook first acknowledged that user data had been improperly channeled in 2014 via a third-party app to Cambridge Analytica, which was later hired by Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.

The data leak has raised investor concerns that any failure by big tech companies to protect privacy could deter advertisers, who are Facebook’s lifeblood, and lead to tougher regulation.

SCRUTINY FROM LAWMAKERS

Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg has repeatedly apologized for the mistakes the company made and has promised to crack down on abuse of the Facebook platform and restrict developers’ access to user information.
There is a new Facebook page – called Access Your Information – where users can see what they have shared and manage it.

“The biggest difference is ease of access in settings, which fulfills Mark Zuckerberg’s promise to make the privacy process and permissions more transparent to users,” Wedbush analyst Michael Pachter said.

It was uncertain whether the changes will satisfy lawmakers.

They were announced ahead of a stringent European Union data law which comes into force in May. It requires companies to give people a “right to portability” – to take their data with them – and imposes fines of up to 4 percent of global revenue for companies breaking the law.

Lawmakers in the United States and Britain are still clamoring for Zuckerberg himself to explain how users’ data ended up in the hands of Cambridge Analytica.

He plans to testify before Congress, a source briefed on the matter said on Tuesday. Facebook has said it has received invitations to testify and that it is talking to legislators.

Zuckerberg and the CEOs of Alphabet Inc and Twitter Inc have been invited to testify at an April 10 hearing on data privacy. The US House Energy and Commerce Committee and US Senate Commerce Committee have also asked Zuckerberg to appear at a hearing.

The US Federal Trade Commission has opened an investigation into Facebook, and attorneys representing 37 states are also pressing Zuckerberg to explain what happened.

source: interaksyon.com

Connections, reconnections…and twins finding each other on Facebook

Get those tissues out, and start scrolling.

In celebration of its tenth birthday, Facebook has come up with www.facebookstories.com to present how users from all over the world were able to use the popular social networking site in an extraordinary way.

There’s Andrea Mihalik from New Jersey, United States, who makes one-of-a-kind, handcrafted chairs for her business, Wild Chairy. On a visit to Kiltamany, a small village in Kenya, she was able to witness a wedding, where the locals were dressed up in beaded jewelry and patterned clothing.


In awe, she knew she wanted to collaborate with the women who wove their own neckpieces. They were able to keep in touch through Facebook messaging, and Mihalik has incorporated their designs into two of her chairs.

One of the women from the village said, on the video that accompanies the story, that she and her fellow weavers were able to send their children to school through the sale of their wares.

Learn more about “Weaving Connections” here: .

Another character is Yisrael Quic, a librarian in the village of San Juan La Laguna in Guatemala.

36 years of war had created a culture of silence in his community of Tz’utujil Mayans. But with the help of teachers who donated books to build a library, the new generation is not just gaining access to information, but slowly finding their voice, as well.

With the arrival of the Internet to their village, they were able to access more knowledge online, but, sadly, there was none on their native language.

Quic is remedying this through a Facebook page and group where he writes in their Mayan language, to be able to bring it – and their way of life – to the future.

Learn more about “The Librarian” here: http://www.facebookstories.com/stories/53739/the-librarian.

A third story is straight out of Parent Trap. Born in Busan, South Korea, Samantha from New Jersey and Anaïs from Paris, France, were twins separated – if not at birth, then somewhere around that time, when they were put up for adoption by different institutions.

After Anaïs saw videos of Samantha on YouTube and a trailer for the latter’s movie 21 & Over, she messaged her on Facebook to find out if there was more to their uncanny resemblance than a mere coincidence.

Five days later they came face-to-face on Skype, and the rest is history.

Learn more about the “Twinsters” here: http://www.facebookstories.com/stories/53771/twinsters.

Facebook has many other stories to move and to inspire, such as that of a homeless poet in São Paulo, Brazil; a photographer in New York, New York; an art movement celebrating LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) rights in Sydney Australia; a cab driver in London, England; lovers in the US, whose relationship transcended continents and lifetimes; and a man from Manitoba, Canada, who helped a boy from Congo undergo a surgery so he could walk.

source: interaksyon.com

Facebook battles to stay young and cool

SAN FRANCISCO, February 2, 2014 (AFP) – Sixteen-year-old Owen Fairchild doesn’t hang out at Facebook as much as he did when he was just a kid.

It is not that he and his friends are abandoning the social network. They are spreading their love to rival networks like Twitter, Pinterest, SnapChat, Instagram and blogging platform Tumblr.

“I’ve moved on,” the teenager said. “I go to Tumblr a lot more; there is a lot of funny stuff. SnapChat is super-fun because you can send really unattractive pictures of yourself and they will delete after a few seconds.”

Contrary to what grownups might think, teens sometimes prefer to catch up on life face-to-face in the real world, he added.

“I think Facebook is still very popular even though some people might be losing interest,” said the 11th-grade student at Alameda Community Learning Center, a charter school in Alameda across the bay from San Francisco.

“There is no talk among my friends saying Facebook is for old people.”

Facebook, born on a college campus a decade ago, has grown to 1.23 billion active users worldwide.

But as it prepares to celebrate its 10th anniversary, Facebook is now facing challenges in keeping its original base of young users as new social networks vie to be the coolest on the Internet.

A social networking trend set in motion by Facebook has been accelerated by soaring popularity of smartphones that let people share images, videos, thoughts or observations at any moment.

Hot young services such as Pinterest, Twitter and SnapChat have sparked concerns that Facebook is losing teens and may follow predecessor MySpace into social networking obscurity.

Facebook’s demographics appear to be shifting as adults, even seniors, use the network to catch up with long-lost friends and stay connected to family and colleagues.

Princeton University student Susannah Sharpless said she and friends have stopped letting Facebook consume their lives.

“Everyone in my friend group went through this stage where we hated Facebook and deleted it,” Sharpless told AFP.

“I was one of the first people to get it back. Slowly, everyone did.”

Breaking from Facebook served as a detox period during which she and friends got a better handle on what was a daily habit, the college junior said.

“I realized how to live without the mindless Facebook stalking that I used to do,” Sharpless said.

“I check my Twitter feed all the time; there is nothing that I definitely need to know on Facebook.”

She also finds more interesting fare on Instagram, which Facebook bought about two years ago in a billion-dollar deal.

“Facebook isn’t done,” Sharpless said. “I think it is just changing in the way people use it.”

Social media network analytics company Socialbakers on Thursday posted findings indicating that “the sky is not falling” when it comes to Facebook’s appeal to the younger set.

Interactions at Facebook by people ages 13 to 24 grew about 29 percent last year, according to Socialbakers.

“Teens are definitely not leaving en masse as some reports would have you believe,” Socialbakers data specialist Ben Harper said in a blog post.

During an earnings call this week, top Facebook executives sidestepped a question about whether the social network was losing teens.

“We are working on great products that all our users, including teens, will take seriously,” said Facebook chief financial officer David Ebersman.

Forrester Research analyst Nate Elliott dismissed Facebook gloom-and-doom talk as “silly.” He argued that, unlike the defunct MySpace, Facebook innovates relentlessly and copies winning features from competitors.

For example, Facebook has woven Twitter-style real-time status updates into the service and introduced a new mobile app aimed at becoming a social newspaper of sorts.

Young people might change how they use Facebook, but they aren’t leaving, according to the Forrester analyst.

“It is not a zero-sum game,” Elliott said. “You don’t stop using one network because you start using another.”

Forrester is preparing to release results of a youth survey that the analyst said contradict the “breathless proclamations of doom” about Facebook.

“When you strip away the hyperbole and just look at the numbers, Facebook is absolutely crushing all the other social networks in terms of young users who go there,” Elliott said.

Independent Silicon Valley analyst Rob Enderle countered that some studies in recent months indicate young people are departing Facebook in a shift that should worry the social network.

“The youth is your seed corn to make sure your service grows; they drive something like this,” Enderle said. “The trendy kids at school need to be at Facebook.”

source: interaksyon.com

Facebook puts ‘donate button’ on news feed for relief in typhoon-hit areas

MANILA, Philippines — A ‘Donate P200.00′ button can now be seen on top of Facebook users’ news feed to help those affected by the supertyphoon that ravaged many parts of central Philippines.



The button will allow subscribers to donate money directly to the Red Cross Red Crescent network to help survivors of supertyphoon Yolanda (Haiyan) that hit the Visayas region almost a week ago.

The amount of P200.00 or roughly $4.50 will be automatically debited from the users credit card or PayPal account. However, for people who want to donate more, will have to go directly to the Red Cross Red Crescent website.

The donate link started appearing on Facebook’s news feed on Thursday, November 14.

source: interaksyon.com

Mobile Facebook users on the uptrend

MANILA, Philippines — More and more users are now browsing their Facebook accounts on their mobile gadgets, the social media giant’s record show.

As of last September, mobile Facebook users reached 874 million in a month, up by 45 percent from 604 million a year ago. On a daily basis, mobile check-ins numbered 507 million, up by over half from 329 million year-on-year.

The growth spurt has in turn contributed nearly half or 49 percent of Facebook’s $1.8 billion in advertising revenues for the third quarter — a revenue share that dwarfs the 14 percent in mobile ad revenues in the same period last year.

The stunning growth in the mobile segment had analysts and investors speculating that Facebook is now training its sights to be a mobile software company. Such a move would be in line with forecasts that the global mobile advertising industry is set out to experience exponential growth in the years ahead.

To capitalize on the growing trend, Ayala-led Globe recently launched a partnership with the social media giant that will provide free Facebook access to its network. The free access is available to the telco’s 36 million subscribers for three months.

source: interaksyon.com

Facebook ends 'invisibility cloak' for users

SAN FRANCISCO - Facebook is ending a feature that allowed users to hide from the billion-plus members of the social network.

The feature, akin to Harry Potter's invisibility cloak, will be removed, meaning that someone looking for another Facebook user can more easily find that person.

"The setting was created when Facebook was a simple directory of profiles and it was very limited," said Facebook's chief privacy officer, Michael Richter.

The setting made Facebook search "feel broken at times," Richter added in a company blog Thursday.

"For example, people told us that they found it confusing when they tried looking for someone who they knew personally and couldn't find them in search results, or when two people were in a Facebook Group and then couldn't find each other through search."

Facebook announced last year it was ending this feature for new users, but allowed a transition for a "small percentage" of users who had that feature enabled.

Richter said the change should not have an impact on overall privacy.

"Whether you've been using the setting or not, the best way to control what people can find about you on Facebook is to choose who can see the individual things you share," he said.

Facebook, which has been under scrutiny by privacy advocates, recently revamped its search functions to include so-called "graph search" that allows users to search through a wide range of posts on the world's biggest social network.

In a separate development, Google announced Friday it was following the lead of Facebook to allow users' pictures and endorsements to be used in product ads.

The change will take effect November 11, Google said in its updated terms of service.

"We want to give you -- and your friends and connections -- the most useful information," the document said.

"Recommendations from people you know can really help. So your friends, family and others may see your profile name and photo, and content like the reviews you share or the ads you (liked)."

Google said users can opt out of this feature, however, and added that it will not use endorsements from users under 18.

source: interaksyon.com

Facebook unveils new privacy controls

SAN FRANCISCO — Facebook Inc began rolling out a variety of new privacy controls on Wednesday, the company’s latest effort to address user concerns about who can see their personal information on the world’s largest social network.

New tools introduced on Wednesday will make it easier for Facebook’s members to quickly determine who can view the photos, comments and other information about them that appears on different parts of the website, and to request that any objectionable photos they’re featured in be removed.

A new privacy “shortcut” in the top-right hand corner of the website provides quick access to key controls such as allowing users to manage who can contact them and to block specific people.

The new controls are the latest changes to Facebook’s privacy settings, which have been criticized in the past for being too confusing.

Facebook Director of Product Sam Lessin said the changes were designed to increase users’ comfort level on the social network, which has roughly one billion users.

“When users don’t understand the concepts and controls and hit surprises, they don’t build the confidence they need,” said Lessin.

Facebook, Google Inc and other online companies have faced increasing scrutiny and enforcement from privacy regulators as consumers entrust ever-increasing amounts of information about their personal lives to Web services.

In April, Facebook settled privacy charges with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission that it had deceived consumers and forced them to share more personal information than they intended. Under the settlement, Facebook is required to get user consent for certain changes to its privacy settings and is subject to 20 years of independent audits.

Facebook’s Lessin said some users don’t understand that the information they post on their Timeline profile page is not the only personal information about them that may be viewable by others. Improvements to Facebook’s so-called Activity Log will make it easier for users to see at a glance all the information that involves them across the social network.

Facebook also said it is changing the way that third-party apps, such as games and music players, get permission to access user data. An app must now provide separate requests to create a personalized service based on a user’s personal information and to post automated messages to the Facebook newsfeed on behalf of a user – previously users agreed to both conditions by approving a single request.

The revamped controls follow proposed changes that Facebook has made to its privacy policy and terms of service. The changes would allow Facebook to integrate user data with that of its recently acquired photo-sharing app Instagram, and would loosen restrictions on how members of the social network can contact other members using the Facebook email system.

Nearly 600,000 Facebook users voted to reject the proposed changes, but the votes fell far short of the roughly 300 million needed for the vote to be binding, under Facebook’s existing rules. The proposed changes also would eliminate any such future votes by Facebook users.

source: interaksyon.com

Facebook not so fun with a click from boss or mom

LONDON — Posting pictures of yourself plastered at a party and talking trash online with your Facebook friends may be more stress than it’s worth now that your boss and mom want to see it all.

A survey from Edinburgh Business School released on Monday showed Facebook users are anxious that all those self-published sins may be coming home to roost with more than half of employers claiming to have used Facebook to weed out job candidates.

“Facebook used to be like a great party for all your friends where you can dance, drink and flirt,” said Ben Marder, author of the report and fellow in marketing at the Business School.

“But now with your Mom, Dad and boss there, the party becomes an anxious event full of potential social landmines.”

On average, people are Facebook friends with seven different social circles, the report found, with real friends known to the user offline the most common.

More than four-fifths of users add extended family on Facebook, a similar number add siblings. Less than 70 percent are connected to friends of friends while more than 60 percent added their colleagues online, despite the anxiety this may cause.

Facebook has settings to control the information seen by different types of friends, but only one third use them, the report said.

“I’m not worried at all because all the really messy pics – me, drunken or worse – I detag straight away,” said Chris from London, aged 30.

People were more commonly friends with former boyfriends or girlfriends than with current ones, the report also found.

source: interaksyon.com

Facebook Hits One Billion Active Users

Facebook has officially reached one billion active users, Facebook CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg has announced.

In an official blog post, he writes:

This morning, there are more than one billion people using Facebook actively each month. If you’re reading this: thank you for giving me and my little team the honor of serving you.

Helping a billion people connect is amazing, humbling and by far the thing I am most proud of in my life. I am committed to working every day to make Facebook better for you, and hopefully together one day we will be able to connect the rest of the world too.

Facebook had 955 million active users in July 2012, and though gaining 45 million users is not a small task, it seems as if the world’s biggest online social network took a little bit more time than expected reaching the 1 billion milestone.

Still, it’s an enormous number, dwarfing most other players in the social networking space by orders of magnitude. It took Facebook several years to reach the magical 100 million number back in 2008, but from then on it seemed like Mark Zuckerberg’s baby could not be stopped.

However, despite its ever-expanding user base, Facebook started looking vulnerable after its stock plummeted following the less-than-stellar initial public offering in May 2012.

source: mashable.com

On Int'l Day of the Disappeared, Facebook users urged to remove profile pics

MANILA, Philippines -- Human rights activists are urging Facebook users to take down their profile pictures on Thursday, August 30, the International Day of the Disappeared, to show solidarity with the families and friends of victims of enforced disappearances.

On Tuesday, Karapatan posted this appeal on its Facebook page: “Please take down your profile picture on August 30, Thursday, in solidarity with the friends and family of the missing, from the Martial Law days up to the present, who continue to seek justice.”

This online action also serves as a rallying cry for the swift passage of the Anti-Enforced Disappearance Bill.

As the nation commemorates the 40th year since former President Ferdinand Marcos imposed Martial Law on the Philippines, Karapatan said it hopes the Filipino people “take stock of the continuing need to remember the open tyrannical rule and the grave human rights violations during the Marcos years; reflect and study the prevailing climate of impunity and the pervasive rights abuses under the Oplan Bayanihan of the current Aquino administration; and resist all forms of curtailment of human rights and pursue justice for the victims and their kin.”

On Thursday, families of those who disappeared during the years following Martial Law will gather at Plaza Miranda to call on President Benigno Aquino III to “stop enforced disappearances and to demand justice for all those who disappeared” over four decades.

Last year, Facebook users also took their profile pictures down to protest continuing enforced disappearances and human rights violations.

In an article on last year’s campaign, InterAksyon noted that the International Day of the Disappeared was initiated by the Federación Latinoamericana de Asociaciones de Familiares de Detenidos-Desaparecidos, “a nongovernment organization established in Costa Rica in 1981, which works to help those affected by forced disappearances in Latin America.”

source: interaksyon.com