By Joshua Dare-
Facebook’s investigation into Cambridge’s University’s use and access to apps is slightly odd but also not brilliant for the top University’s boss, professor Aleksandr Kogan .
The claim that a number of organisations may be guilty of unauthorised access to computer networks or breach of contract is one that would have taken many by surprise.
Zuckerberg, the clever founder of the site already confirmed he had taking action against Kogan by banning him from the platform. “We already took action by banning [Kogan] from the platform and we’re going to be doing a full audit to make sure he gets rid of all the data that he has as well.”
Speaking on the second day of US congressional hearings, Zuckerberg said: “What we found now is that there’s a whole programme associated with Cambridge University where … there were a number of other researchers building similar apps.
“We do need to understand whether there is something bad going on at Cambridge University overall that will require a stronger action from us.”
Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerberg, was struggling to handle tough questions on his second day of congressional testimony on Wednesday as he faced sharp questions about the tech giant’s ability to track its users’ movements, shopping habits and browsing histories and was at one stage compared to J Edgar Hoover.
During five hours of testimony, the billionaire entrepreneur revealed that his own personal information was among that handed over to the political consultancy Cambridge Analytica, which harvested the data of up to 87 million Facebook users without their permission.
Cambridge University researcher Aleksandr Kogan created the personality survey app then allegedly passed the datathisisyourdigitallif data collected from the app was then allegedly passed to data analytics firm Cambridge Analytica. The surprising element of all this is that Zuckerberg is expected to long have been are of the research in progress but the University, but the real question is whether there is anything illegal or unethical about it.
A spokesman for Cambridge responded to the Facebook chief executive’s comments by saying it would be “surprised” if Zuckerberg was only now aware of the university’s research.
“These have included one study in 2015 led by Dr Aleksandr Spectre (Kogan) and co-authored by two Facebook employees.
“We have found no evidence that University researchers are improperly gathering personal data.”
Facebook is itself being scrutinised after it emerged that the personal data of 87 million users may have been improperly shared with Cambridge Analytica, up from the 50 million previously estimated by media reports. This week, the social network began notifying users whose data had been improperly obtained.
Zuckerberg was questioned by senators on issues including users’ data privacy during the two-day congressional hearing, but avoided answering some questions by saying that he would ask his team to get back to representatives with more information. He did, however, concede that ‘some sort of regulation’ would be inevitable for the platform
