Facebook's troubles continue to grow: What you need to know. The social network is under fire for how it collects user data. Here's a look at the biggest scandals that have rocked the social media giant. Data breaches, bugs and misuse- Cambridge Analytica - The scandal that kicked it all off was Cambridge Analytica. In March, a joint investigation by The New York Times, the Guardian and the Observer revealed that a UK-based consultancy with ties to Donald Trump's presidential campaign had misused the data of tens of thousands of Facebook's more than 2 billion users.
The trail allegedly leads back to a Cambridge professor named Aleksandr Kogan, who created an app called "thisisyourdigitallife," a personality quiz that was billed as "a research app used by psychologists." He legitimately gained access to information on 270,000 accounts through Facebook's Login feature, which lets people use their Facebook account to log in to outside apps so they don't have to create new usernames and passwords. But he broke Facebook's rules by sharing the data with Cambridge Analytica.
The investigative report set off a firestorm over how Facebook handles people's personal information. What made it worse: Zuckerberg and Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg remained silent for days before commenting on the scandal. Eventually, Facebook admitted that the scope of the problem was larger than once thought. It was originally reported that the incident affected 50 million users. Turns out it was 87 million. Facebook later built a tool to let people know if their data had been accessed.
'View as' data breach-
As if that wasn't enough, Facebook in September disclosed a breach that affected 50 million people on the social network. The vulnerability stemmed from Facebook's "view as" feature, which lets people see what their profiles look like to other people. Attackers exploited code associated with the feature and were able to steal "access tokens" they could use to take over people's accounts. Though access tokens aren't your password, they let people log in to accounts without needing it.
Two weeks later, Facebook said the data of 29 million people had been stolen, including names, email addresses and phone numbers. For 14 million of the people, hackers also nabbed birth date, hometown and workplace, along with most-recent searches or places the people had checked in to on the social network.
Photos exposed-
On Dec. 14, Facebook disclosed its latest breach. A bug on the social network exposed 6.8 million people's photos to outside developers. The developers could see the photos if users uploaded them to the social network, even if the users didn't actually post them.
Data-sharing deals -
Facebook's problems didn't stop there. On Dec. 18, the Times reported on how much user data Facebook provided to some of its partners. Netflix, Spotify and the Royal Bank of Canada could read users' private messages, the Times said.
The trail allegedly leads back to a Cambridge professor named Aleksandr Kogan, who created an app called "thisisyourdigitallife," a personality quiz that was billed as "a research app used by psychologists." He legitimately gained access to information on 270,000 accounts through Facebook's Login feature, which lets people use their Facebook account to log in to outside apps so they don't have to create new usernames and passwords. But he broke Facebook's rules by sharing the data with Cambridge Analytica.
The investigative report set off a firestorm over how Facebook handles people's personal information. What made it worse: Zuckerberg and Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg remained silent for days before commenting on the scandal. Eventually, Facebook admitted that the scope of the problem was larger than once thought. It was originally reported that the incident affected 50 million users. Turns out it was 87 million. Facebook later built a tool to let people know if their data had been accessed.
'View as' data breach-
As if that wasn't enough, Facebook in September disclosed a breach that affected 50 million people on the social network. The vulnerability stemmed from Facebook's "view as" feature, which lets people see what their profiles look like to other people. Attackers exploited code associated with the feature and were able to steal "access tokens" they could use to take over people's accounts. Though access tokens aren't your password, they let people log in to accounts without needing it.
Two weeks later, Facebook said the data of 29 million people had been stolen, including names, email addresses and phone numbers. For 14 million of the people, hackers also nabbed birth date, hometown and workplace, along with most-recent searches or places the people had checked in to on the social network.
Photos exposed-
On Dec. 14, Facebook disclosed its latest breach. A bug on the social network exposed 6.8 million people's photos to outside developers. The developers could see the photos if users uploaded them to the social network, even if the users didn't actually post them.
Data-sharing deals -
Facebook's problems didn't stop there. On Dec. 18, the Times reported on how much user data Facebook provided to some of its partners. Netflix, Spotify and the Royal Bank of Canada could read users' private messages, the Times said.
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