By Rob Pulham, Warwick Andersen and Georgia Mills
In another blow to embattled Facebook, British and US lawyers have launched a class action lawsuit against the social media giant, along with Cambridge Analytica and two other companies for allegedly misusing the data of over 87 million people.
By Cameron Abbott and Allison Wallace
While the recent Facebook saga has underlined the fact that using a password to protect your data doesn’t mean it won’t be improperly accessed, we have become used to needing to create, remember and use passwords in most aspects of our digital lives.
But the humble letter/number/symbol combination may soon be a thing of the past, with a new web standard – the Web Authentication (WebAuthn) – expected to be issued soon.
By Cameron Abbott and Sarah Goegan
Mark Zuckerberg testified before the US Congress in two marathon sessions this week. He was quizzed on topics including Cambridge Analytica and data sharing, privacy law and social media regulation, and Facebook’s policies.
By Cameron Abbott and Allison Wallace
Over the last few weeks we’ve been blogging about the data “sharing” scandal that has rocked Facebook, and has lead to a boycott of the popular social media site, and sent CEO Mark Zuckerberg to face the music on Capitol Hill.
In case you’d missed the story (which you can read about here, here and here), Facebook estimated 87 million people globally, including 300,000 Australians, had their data shared with Cambridge Analytica, a political consultancy firm used by US President Donald Trump in his 2016 election campaign.
By Warwick Andersen, Rob Pulham, Allison Wallace and Sarah Goegan
Facebook indicated in a blog post yesterday that information of up to 87 million people – 37 million more than originally revealed – may have been improperly shared with Cambridge Analytica.
Facebook also reported that this may have included data of more than 300,000 Australians. The company’s chief technology officer, Mike Schroepfer, said the company would make major changes to the way third-parties can access data on the platform. He also said users would be informed if their information could have been improperly shared with Cambridge Analytica.
By Cameron Abbott and Allison Wallace
Last month we blogged about the potential for data from our smart devices being used against us in court. Well, that potential has now been realised in Australia, with prosecutors in a murder trial in Adelaide telling the court that data from the victim’s Apple Watch helped pin down her suspected murderer.
By Cameron Abbott and Sarah Goegan
Travel-booking site Orbitz confirmed that it has suffered a major data security breach, in which details of up to 880,000 credit cards were compromised.
By Cameron Abbott and Georgia Mills
News of Facebook’s involvement in the United States’ elections is nothing new, especially with the ongoing Cambridge Analytica scandal, so it should come as little surprise that the social media giant has extended its reach into the Australian electoral sphere.
Facebook approached Australia’s major political parties during the 2016 Federal election offering a powerful data matching tool. This “advanced matching” tool would allow parties to match data they had collected about voters- including names, dates of birth, contact details, and postcodes- against similar information provided by users on their Facebook profiles. The combined data would allow parties to identify swinging voters and target them with tailored ads when they use Facebook.
By Cameron Abbott and Samantha Tyrrell
It has been alleged that Cambridge Analytica, a political data analytics firm specialising in psychological profiling, has tapped more than 50 million users’ Facebook profiles without their consent and subsequently used the data to assist Donald Trump’s 2016 electoral campaign.
By Cameron Abbott, Keely O’Dowd and Samantha Tyrrell
Bug Bounty Programs (BBPs) actively encourage hackers to explore a company’s systems and report back on any vulnerability they discover. Often, pre-determined financial incentives are offered to the “security researcher” in return for their findings. The attraction of this process is obvious; rather than suffering a cyber incident that could – and for many organisations has – cost millions of dollars and resulted in reputational damage, companies can instead make a comparatively small payment to ethical “white hat” hackers with the intention of pre-empting an incident.
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