Data collected by an app leaked onto the Internet and became freely accessible to unauthorized persons - British data protection authority is investigating data leak

As heise Online reports, personal data of 3 million Facebook users was publicly accessible on the Internet for years. According to the scientific magazine New Science, this data was collected using an app called “myPersonality” from the University of Cambridge.

The information collected from the personality quiz was made available to other researchers on an unsecure website. However, it is said to have been “relatively easy” for unauthorized parties to obtain the data. The University of Cambridge also stated that the app had not gone through an internal approval process.

As part of Facebook's extensive review of thousands of apps, “myPersonality” was suspended on April 7, 2018. What is interesting here, however, is that Facebook itself had access to this data. More than 280 people and 150 institutions (including Facebook, Google and Microsoft) were given access to the data after they registered and had to ensure that the data would not be de-anonymized. You were also not allowed to make any direct profits from the data.

The company Cambridge Analytica, known for its data scandal, was also interested in the information in 2013. However, David Stillwell, keeper of the data records, assures that access was refused due to the company's political ambitions.

Sensitive data public on the internet

The records contained personal details about Facebook users, including answers to intimate questions. Approximately 3 million people also allowed the app to access their Facebook information.

Even though the names of the records had been removed, the information could be de-anonymized quite easily because each record has a unique ID. In combination with the personal information, conclusions about individual users were possible.

And not only that: there was even a back door for unauthorized persons.

A working username and password were accessible online for four years. Anyone who “wanted a key to the app’s data found it in less than a minute.” After a lecturer gave the access data to his students as part of a course project, they apparently ended up on GitHub. The data of around 3 million Facebook users became freely accessible. There are also 22 million status updates from 150,000 users and details on gender, relationship status and age from around 4.5 million users.

The only question that remains is who else used this data. The British data protection authority Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) is now investigating the case.

More on the topic:

Danger from Facebook apps – protect your data from unauthorized access!

Delete connected apps in one fell swoop!

Facebook's new terms of use


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