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Mark Zuckerberg's own personal data was taken as part of Facebook's data abuse scandal , he has said.
He made the confession during Congress hearings, where US lawmakers quizzed the Facebook boss on how it was responding to claims it had unethically abused data about its users.
The admission means that organisations may have access to data about Mr Zuckerberg that wouldn't usually be available to the public. Developers were able to access information like a users' friends and other personal information – a decision that has been criticised, and which Facebook has taken efforts to now stop.
How to stop Facebook from revealing everything about youShow all 9 1 /9How to stop Facebook from revealing everything about you How to stop Facebook from revealing everything about you 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.
How to stop Facebook from revealing everything about you 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.
How to stop Facebook from revealing everything about you 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.
How to stop Facebook from revealing everything about you 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.
How to stop Facebook from revealing everything about you 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.
How to stop Facebook from revealing everything about you 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.
How to stop Facebook from revealing everything about you 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.
How to stop Facebook from revealing everything about you 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.
How to stop Facebook from revealing everything about you 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 didn't say exactly what third-party app had stolen his data. But the questioning came as part of a discussion about Cambridge Analytica, the political data company that has been accused of scraping data and using it for campaigning.
Representative Anna Eshoo, reading questions from her constituents in and around Silicon Valley, California, asked Mr Zuckerberg whether he was one of the 87 million people whose data was handed to Cambridge Analytica.
"Yes," Mr Zuckerberg replied.
He gave little more information about what had been taken and how.
Facebook allows anyone to check if they were part of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, by heading to a special page . But other apps are thought to have used similar tricks, and Cambridge Analytica itself has said that it did not think what it did was particularly special.
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