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According to research by the Wall Street Journal, 5.8 million accounts were on an internal Facebook list that was subject to special rules. Now, the company's own auditors are getting involved. The accusations are serious: Facebook is said to have systematically protected prominent users from consequences when they posted false information, insults or even nude pictures of third parties. Following a series of articles in the Wall Street Journal, the Oversight Board, the company's formally independent review body, has now become involved. Among other things, the members want to clarify whether they were adequately informed by Facebook on the issue. Facebook must become more transparent when deciding whether content should remain on the platform or be deleted, the panel stressed in a blog entry on Tuesday . The newspaper had published a whole series of accusations in a series of articles after analyzing internal emails from the social media company. These include the system cal...

This should not suit Mark Zuckerberg at all: In the "Facebook Files," the Wall Street Journal reveals explosive documents from the company. How social is the network really? Six journalists have spent the past few weeks analyzing the leaked documents: including internal memos, PowerPoint presentations and discussions from Facebook's internal company chat channel. "We show that these are not isolated cases of failure that caught the company by surprise. Rather, there is widespread acceptance here," says Jeff Horwitz. He is the lead author of the "Facebook Files" series of articles in the "Wall Street Journal" and Silicon Valley reporter for the business newspaper. "Facebook doesn't care much. It only takes action when a case generates public attention." Exemption rules for millions of celebrities In the latest article, the Wall Street Journal quotes from an internal protocol. According to this, a Facebook manager is said to have ...

The messenger service WhatsApp does not exactly have the best reputation at the moment. The criticism comes primarily from data protectionists. Normal users, on the other hand, shrug their shoulders. The months-long controversy over WhatsApp's new privacy rules appears to have had little consequence for Facebook's chat service in Germany. In a survey commissioned by the news agency dpa, 79 percent said they use the app on their smartphone. According to the survey, a good half of WhatsApp users (52 percent) already agreed with the new rules, which came into force in mid-May. At the same time, 13 percent said they planned to delete the app. Around half of them already had data protection concerns beforehand, while five percent of respondents only had doubts following the debate about the new regulations. Two percent want to leave because many of their contacts would also have removed WhatsApp. Half have "no good feeling," but stay anyway Whether it actually comes to the...

Facebook has become the focus of the EU antitrust authorities: the world's largest online network could be violating EU law by misusing the data of its advertising customers. Facebook is not the first U.S. Internet company to be scrutinized by the EU. The EU antitrust authority has launched investigations against Facebook for violations of competition law. The proceedings are about whether the online giant is violating EU law with its Facebook Marketplace classifieds service. This was announced by EU Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager.  Via Marketplace, users of the social network can privately buy and sell goods from each other. According to the EU Commission, it wants to clarify whether Facebook is exploiting its position in other markets for this service in an anti-competitive manner. If competing companies advertised their services on the largest social network, Facebook could come into possession of commercially valuable data and then use it against competitors, accor...

Clearview AI has scooped up billions of photos from the web and turned them into a biometrics database for authorities. European activists are calling for "a clear Europe-wide ban on such services". Clearview AI, a New York-based company specializing in facial recognition, has been in legal trouble in the US for some time. A whole series of complaints against the company is currently underway in several US states. Now they have been joined by European civil rights activists. An alliance of organizations including Privacy International and noyb ("none of your business") has filed complaints with the data protection authorities of the UK, France, Austria, Italy and Greece. "What we want to achieve is a clear decision that services like Clearview are illegal in their current form in the EU," says Alan Dahi, privacy lawyer at noyb. That applies even if the providers are based abroad and have no paying customers in the EU, he adds. Thousands of government cust...

The Signal team wanted to run ads showing how personalized Facebook ads work. The advertising account was deactivated. The team of the messenger Signal tried to place ads on Facebook platforms such as Instagram and wanted to disclose the personalization of the ads. As those involved now write in the Signal blog , however, they were excluded from Facebook's advertising network for this. The announcement says: "Companies like Facebook don't build technology for you, they build technology for your data. They collect everything they can from Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp to sell insights into people and their lives." And while that's no secret, exactly how it works remains unclear to many, he said. So now Signal wanted to showcase how ad personalization works based on the data it collects, even through ads. "Facebook's own tools have the potential to reveal what otherwise remains unseen. (...) We wanted to use those same tools to directly show how most of ...

Many cell phone users are falling into an SMS trap set by online criminals, current figures from network operators show. Increasingly, the fraudulent messages are also spreading via messengers such as WhatsApp. Several thousand German customers of all major mobile providers are currently falling victim to dangerous spam text messages every day. Deutsche Telekom alone records an average of 7,000 to 8,000 customers a day who click on links contained in such text messages and infect their phones with malware. The figures come from analyses by the company's IT security experts, as a Telekom spokesperson explained when asked. The experts also observe that attackers have increasingly tried to spread the spam messages via messengers such as WhatsApp or Telegram in recent days. Often, the text messages pretend to come from parcel delivery companies. Instead of information about a delivery status, the links lead users to hijacked websites where users of Android devices are asked to download...

More and more cell phones are receiving SMS messages, for example for tracking shipments, via which the banking Trojan FluBot is installed. The BSI urges caution. For days now, users of smartphones and other cell phones have been receiving an increasing number of short messages asking them to click on a link. The German Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) has identified a "smishing" wave (SMS phishing) behind this, which is used to scam access data via fake messages. Currently, the cell phone messages contain a link behind which the Android malware program FluBot is hidden in most of the currently observed cases. Malware app for Android, phishing websites for iOS This banking Trojan, which attempts to spy on confidential data and tap into apps for online account management or custody account management, has been circulating since around November 2020, according to the BSI. The perpetrators pretend, for example, that the recipients of the SMS will soon receive a pack...

Data of over 500 million Facebook users, which originated from a leak in 2019, has recently resurfaced on the Internet. Since the leaked data also includes numerous cell phone numbers, many users are currently receiving intrusive SMS spam. Here's what you can do about it. Facebook can claim 1,000 times that the circulating data originates from an older leak and that the breach has long since been closed: The fact is that over 500 million data records of Facebook users have been offered by cybercriminals on the Internet in recent days. In addition to names, the data also includes cell phone numbers, locations, and in some cases birth dates and mail addresses. As it turns out, affected users from Germany are currently receiving more SMS spam messages. You can easily check whether your data has also been tapped. You can use the web app from Have I Been Pwned to search for your email address and, more recently, your cell phone number . As it turns out, there are significantly more mob...

The personal data of Facebook users worldwide has apparently been stolen. This is reported by several media . According to the report, they were posted on a hacker forum - and are now available to criminals. Phone numbers and personal data of hundreds of millions of Facebook users were published in a forum for hackers on Saturday. This was reported by several media . Although the data is said to be several years old, it poses a risk to those whose details became public. The releases reportedly include personal information of more than 533 million Facebook users from 106 countries, including more than 32 million records on users in the U.S., 11 million on users in the U.K. and 6 million on users in India. The records include phone numbers, Facebook IDs, full names, locations, dates of birth and, in some cases, email addresses. The data, which has now surfaced, was reportedly discovered by cybercrime firm Hudson Rock. They could provide valuable information to criminals. It is conceivabl...

In the dispute between the German Federal Cartel Office and Facebook over the sharing of user data, the European Court of Justice is now to rule. The European Court of Justice (ECJ) is to rule on the extent to which Facebook may merge user data with its other services Whatsapp and Instagram. This was decided by the Düsseldorf Higher Regional Court on Wednesday in a dispute between Facebook and the German Federal Cartel Office. The authority had prohibited the social network operator from demanding blanket consent from its users to collect and link data without offering the alternative of less extensive data use. Both parties have been disputing the February 2019 decision for more than two years. After the Federal Court of Justice (BGH) ruled in favor of the competition watchdogs in summary proceedings in June 2020, the Higher Regional Court now had to examine the case more thoroughly in the main proceedings. This also involves the question of whether the terms of use of Facebook servi...

Facebook collects the biometric data of millions of users in the USA - without them knowing about it. The company is accused of violating privacy laws. The platform has now reached a record settlement in court. To settle a lawsuit over the violation of the privacy of 1.6 million users in the U.S., the Internet group Facebook pays 650 million dollars (538 million euros) compensation. According to documents seen by the AFP news agency, a federal court approved the agreement between Facebook and 1.6 million of its users in the state of Illinois. The Chicago district attorney's office had charged Facebook in 2015 with collecting biometric data for facial recognition, which was done without users' knowledge. It argued that the California-based Internet giant's actions violated a privacy law passed in Illinois in 2008. After Facebook failed with its motion to dismiss the case, the company had agreed in January 2020 to pay $550 million to settle the lawsuit. However, Judge James D...

The head of the social media giant shared internally how the group plans to fight back against the iPhone manufacturer's new privacy rules. The dispute between Apple and Facebook is getting angrier and angrier. In front of members of his team, the head of the social media giant, Mark Zuckerberg, is reported to have said that the iPhone company should be "hurt". This seems to mean, among other things, an antitrust suit that Facebook has been preparing for some time - as well as other measures to harm Apple. For example, according to recent reports, Facebook is planning, among other things, to introduce its own computer watch that will have fitness functions as well as access to Messenger and WhatsApp to counter the Apple Watch. Apple wants to restrict tracking Zuckerberg's threats were leaked to the Wall Street Journal , and Facebook's Watch plans were reported by IT news service The Information . The reason for Facebook's frustration remains Apple's priva...

After an announcement of new privacy policies, users are running away from Whatsapp in droves. To stop this exodus, the market leader is postponing the introduction of the controversial new rules. The messenger service sees itself as a victim of false information. The messenger service Whatsapp is postponing the introduction of new privacy rules by a good three months following criticism and an exodus of users. Previously, users were supposed to agree to the new terms by Feb. 8 if they wanted to continue using the chat service, which belongs to Facebook. Now the new privacy policy should only apply from May 15, Whatsapp announced. According to Whatsapp, the changes are primarily about creating better opportunities for communication with companies. The end-to-end encryption, with which chat content is only visible in plain text to the participating users, but not even to Whatsapp itself, will not be changed. It is also not about an extended data forwarding to Facebook. Outside the EU, W...

The two mega-corporations are alleged to have entered into unfair agreements. In addition, the indictment accuses Google of manipulating header bidding. Nine US states have filed a lawsuit accusing Google of abusing its market power in the online advertising market. The focus is on a series of illegal agreements between parent company Alphabet and Facebook. The two companies control more than half of the market worldwide. In a deal that became public in 2018, the two reportedly agreed to let Facebook's advertisers run ads through Google's ad exchange. The search engine giant had entered into similar partnerships with other market players under the alias "Project Jedi" to maintain its market share. In return, Facebook received preferential treatment in the form of market-distorting exemptions, prosecutors write. The social media company subsequently withdrew from competing software that publishers brought to market to break Google's market power. Literally, the do...

Google and Facebook collect a particularly large amount of data from their users, and this is made particularly clear by an innovation in Apple's App Store. From now on, Apple wants to explain more precisely in its own app store which user data an app can access. For this purpose, there is now a new app privacy section, which is becoming a real data disaster for some large companies. The mandatory information reveals repeatedly and now directly "to the user" how data-hungry Facebook and Co. actually are. Google, on the other hand, has simply not updated its iOS apps at all in the new year. They would like to do so soon, but so far there have been no new updates and therefore the information field "Data linked to you" is still empty. Facebook, on the other hand, has been exemplary , but this makes for a dramatic picture. Kind of everything, right? What Facebook wants to know from us:   A comparison of various popular messengers alone shows that Facebook Messenger...

Hundreds of millions of iPhone owners will soon have to agree before apps are allowed to collect certain data. This panics Facebook - which already has an intimate dislike for Apple. Two of the world's largest corporations are fighting over a small pop-up. If Facebook is to be believed, the fate of millions of small businesses is at stake. And because that's not enough, the future of the web is allegedly also at stake. All of this threatens Apple, it says, because it will soon present users with an unassuming dialog asking whether apps are allowed to collect their data. This message seems to be very important to Facebook. In several blog posts and full-page ads in major U.S. media such as the New York Times and the Washington Post, Facebook is staging itself as the savior of the "free Internet" and advocate for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). On a specially set up campaign page , hoteliers, hairdressers, restaurant owners and others supposedly affected a...

New changes to WhatsApp’s privacy policy will force users to share a significant amount of data with the messaging app’s many-tentacled owner, Facebook. Users were first informed of the changes this week via an in-app notification, which asked them to accept an updated privacy policy taking effect on February 8. After that date “you’ll need to accept these updates to continue using WhatsApp,” it read. According to the ledger of terms and conditions , data that will be given to Facebook and its other subsidiaries includes “your account registration information (such as your phone number), transaction data, service-related information, information on how you interact with others (including businesses) when using our Services, mobile device information, your IP address, and may include other information identified in the Privacy Policy section entitled ‘Information We Collect’ or obtained upon notice to you or based on your consent.” The update was spotted on developer f...