In recent news, Facebook has been responding to the recent data leakage of nearly 533 million Facebook users. However, it is quite not what users expected as the company mentioned they won’t be disclosing that which user’s data got leaked.
In the dataset that went online for free, there is a lot of information many would not prefer being disclosed. This includes location, phone numbers, emails, etc. hence making the company’s decision even more dissatisfying. The company believes that even if users found out which data got leaked there would be absolutely nothing the users could do to counter it.
Over the last year, I have asked Facebook more than a dozen times if it will take legal action against Clearview AI for scraping what is likely millions of photos from Instagram and Facebook. No lawsuits have been filed and FB has said nothing on record.https://t.co/htkKCD5bT0
— Ryan Mac 🙃 (@RMac18) April 7, 2021
In a recent blog, Facebook stated that it believes that the data was scraped via its contact importer before September 2019 which is primarily a violation of the company’s policies. However, Buzzfeed news reporter, Ryan Mac pointed out that this didn’t quite mesh with the fact that the company hasn’t filed lawsuits against Clearview AI for scraping photos from Instagram and Facebook.
However, Facebook says it has “made changes to the contact importer” to stop the scraping.