'Utterly horrifying': ex-Facebook insider says covert data harvesting was routine

[swag]

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/mar/20/facebook-data-cambridge-analytica-sandy-parakilas?CMP=share_btn_tw

Paul Lewis

Hundreds of millions of Facebook users are likely to have had their private information harvested by companies that exploited the same terms as the firm that collected data and passed it on to Cambridge Analytica, according to a new whistleblower.

Sandy Parakilas, the platform operations manager at Facebook responsible for policing data breaches by third-party software developers between 2011 and 2012, told the Guardian he warned senior executives at the company that its lax approach to data protection risked a major breach.

“My concerns were that all of the data that left Facebook servers to developers could not be monitored by Facebook, so we had no idea what developers were doing with the data,” he said.

Parakilas said Facebook had terms of service and settings that “people didn’t read or understand” and the company did not use its enforcement mechanisms, including audits of external developers, to ensure data was not being misused.

Parakilas, whose job it was to investigate data breaches by developers similar to the one later suspected of Global Science Research, which harvested tens of millions of Facebook profiles and provided the data to Cambridge Analytica, said the slew of recent disclosures had left him disappointed with his superiors for not heeding his warnings.

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[yallerdawg]

1. When I did sales a couple decades ago...

we used 'Cole Directories' which were a fascinating new tool!

It was a hard book directory which cross-referenced names, addresses, phone numbers, income status, neighborhood property values - every fact gleaned about someone as information technology began to advance.

Government survellance is regulated.

What corporations, internet service providers, and 'data mining' today is doing is the Wild, Wild West!

"Cole's?" Still out there!

https://www.coleinformation.com/

[Maven]

2. This wasn't a 'breach', this is Facebook's business model: exploiting its users. nt

[YessirAtsaFact]

3. And selling precisely targeted advertising

[Skittles]

4. CORRECT