A US Congressman has claimed that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg may have lied to Congress about how much control users have over their data.
Congressman David Cicilline, a Democratic representative for Rhode Island, made the allegation following a report that Facebook gave Apple, Samsung and other firms "deep access" to its user data as part of a data-sharing partnership.
“Sure looks like Zuckerberg lied to Congress about whether users have ‘complete control’ over who sees our data on Facebook,” Congressman Cicilline said on Twitter.
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“This needs to be investigated and the people responsible need to be held accountable.”
How to stop Facebook from revealing everything about you
Show all 9
How to stop Facebook from revealing everything about you
1/9 Lock your profile down
If you haven’t done this already, do it now. In Settings, hit the Privacy tab. From here, you can control who gets to see your future posts and friends list. Choose from Public, Friends, Only Me and Custom in the dropdown menu.
2/9 Limit old posts
Annoyingly, changing this has no effect on who’s able to see your past Facebook posts. Instead, on the Privacy page, you have to click on Limit Past Posts, then select Limit Old Posts and finally hit Confirm on the pop-up.
3/9 Make yourself harder to find
You can stop completely random people from adding you by selecting Friends of Friends from the dropdown menu in the Who can send you friend requests? section of the Privacy page. It’s also worth limiting who can find your Facebook profile with your number and email address.
At the bottom of the page is the option to prevent search engines outside of Facebook from linking to your profile.
4/9 Control access to your Timeline
You can limit who gets to post things on your Timeline and who gets to see posts on your Timeline too. In Settings, go to Timeline and Tagging and edit the sections you want to lock down.
5/9 Block people
When you block someone, they won’t be able to see things you post on your Timeline, tag you, invite you to events or groups, start conversations with you or add you as a friend. To do it, go to Settings and Blocking. Annoyingly, you have to block people on Messenger separately.
You can also add friends to your Restricted list here, which means they’ll still be friends with you but will only be able to see your public posts and things you share on a mutual friend's Timeline.
6/9 Review tags
One of Facebook’s handiest privacy features is the ability to review posts you’re tagged in before they appear on your Timeline. They’ll still be visible on the News Feed while they’re fresh, but won’t be tied to your profile forever. In Timeline and Tagging, enable Timeline review controls.
7/9 Clean up your apps
You can view a list of all of the apps you’ve connected to your Facebook account by going to Settings and Apps. The list might be longer than you expected it to be. It’s worth tidying this up to ensure things you no longer use lose access to your personal information.
If you don’t want to log into websites and apps with your facebook account, scroll down and turn Platform off.
8/9 Change your ad preferences
You can view a list of everything Facebook thinks you’re into and tinker with your ad preferences by going to Settings and Adverts. A lot more information is displayed on the desktop site than the app, so we’d recommend doing this on a computer.
9/9 Download your data
Facebook lets you download all of the data it has on you, including the posts you’ve shared, your messages and photos, ads you’ve clicked on and even the IP addresses that are logged when you log in or out of the site. It’s a hell of a lot of information, which you should download to ensure you never over-share on the social network again.
1/9 Lock your profile down
If you haven’t done this already, do it now. In Settings, hit the Privacy tab. From here, you can control who gets to see your future posts and friends list. Choose from Public, Friends, Only Me and Custom in the dropdown menu.
2/9 Limit old posts
Annoyingly, changing this has no effect on who’s able to see your past Facebook posts. Instead, on the Privacy page, you have to click on Limit Past Posts, then select Limit Old Posts and finally hit Confirm on the pop-up.
3/9 Make yourself harder to find
You can stop completely random people from adding you by selecting Friends of Friends from the dropdown menu in the Who can send you friend requests? section of the Privacy page. It’s also worth limiting who can find your Facebook profile with your number and email address.
At the bottom of the page is the option to prevent search engines outside of Facebook from linking to your profile.
4/9 Control access to your Timeline
You can limit who gets to post things on your Timeline and who gets to see posts on your Timeline too. In Settings, go to Timeline and Tagging and edit the sections you want to lock down.
5/9 Block people
When you block someone, they won’t be able to see things you post on your Timeline, tag you, invite you to events or groups, start conversations with you or add you as a friend. To do it, go to Settings and Blocking. Annoyingly, you have to block people on Messenger separately.
You can also add friends to your Restricted list here, which means they’ll still be friends with you but will only be able to see your public posts and things you share on a mutual friend's Timeline.
6/9 Review tags
One of Facebook’s handiest privacy features is the ability to review posts you’re tagged in before they appear on your Timeline. They’ll still be visible on the News Feed while they’re fresh, but won’t be tied to your profile forever. In Timeline and Tagging, enable Timeline review controls.
7/9 Clean up your apps
You can view a list of all of the apps you’ve connected to your Facebook account by going to Settings and Apps. The list might be longer than you expected it to be. It’s worth tidying this up to ensure things you no longer use lose access to your personal information.
If you don’t want to log into websites and apps with your facebook account, scroll down and turn Platform off.
8/9 Change your ad preferences
You can view a list of everything Facebook thinks you’re into and tinker with your ad preferences by going to Settings and Adverts. A lot more information is displayed on the desktop site than the app, so we’d recommend doing this on a computer.
9/9 Download your data
Facebook lets you download all of the data it has on you, including the posts you’ve shared, your messages and photos, ads you’ve clicked on and even the IP addresses that are logged when you log in or out of the site. It’s a hell of a lot of information, which you should download to ensure you never over-share on the social network again.
Mr Zuckerberg appeared before Congress voluntarily in April to answer questions about the way it handles users’ data in the wake of the scandal surrounding Cambridge Analytica – the UK data firm that harvested personal information from around 87 million Facebook accounts for the purpose of political profiling.
During the hearing, Mr Zuckerberg said: "You should have complete control over your data... If we're not communicating this clearly, that's a big thing we should work on."
According to a report in The New York Times on Sunday, Facebook began granting inappropriate access to personal information of its users to third parties around 10 years ago.
Around 60 device manufacturers formed the data-sharing partnerships, which were used to expand the reach of the social network before app stores were commonplace.
The report suggests that these partnerships are in breach of a 2011 consent decree by the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC), which barred Facebook from granting other companies access to user date without explicit consent.
Facebook responded to the report with a blogpost explaining that the partnerships were "built on a common interest" and were standard practice for companies like Facebook, Google and Twitter.
"These partners signed agreements that prevented people’s Facebook information from being used for any other purpose than to recreate Facebook-like experiences," Ime Archibong, vice president of product partnerships, said in the post titled: Why We Disagree with The New York Times.
"This is so foreign to us and not data that we have ever received at all or requested – zero," Mr Cook said during Apple's annual Worldwide Developer Conference this week.
"What we did was we integrated the ability to share in the operating system, make it simple to share a photo and that sort of thing. So it's convenient for the user. We weren't in the data business. We've never been in the data business."
Former Facebook operations manager Sandy Parakilas, who left the company in 2012, responded on Twitter to the allegations brought against Facebook by saying that some of Mr Zuckerberg's statements to Congress were incorrect.
Mr Parakilas, who blew the whistle on Facebook's privacy practices during the Cambridge Analytica scandal, pointed to a comment made by Mr Zuckerberg during the Congress hearing.
The whistleblower claimed that this statement to Congress "was not correct," as some of the third parties still had access to the data of a users' contacts.
"This wasn't a small misstatement – the crux of Facebook's argument was that they fixed the friend permission problem in 2014," Mr Parakilas added.
"They shouldn't be allowed to qualify that now, after getting caught breaking their promise. Lawmakers must hold Facebook accountable."
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