TechBooky

Following on the resignation of Instagram‘s co-founders last month — amid a rumored feud with Mark Zuckerberg — the latest development of the platform has been revealed—Instagram appears to be testing a new privacy setting that would enable it to share its users’ location histories with parent company Facebook. The prototype Location History feature has being tested within Instagram suggests that Location History data collected when Location Services is turned on in the Instagram app will be used to bolster Facebook"s ad targeting. First spotted by researcher Jane Wong , the feature appears under Instagram‘s privacy settings, buried in the fine print about Location History. Wong shared screenshot the image in the Facebook Privacy and Security settings, an option that “Allows Facebook Products, including Instagram and Messenger, to build and use a history of precise locations received through Location Services on your device. Instagram"s Locatio...

Following the scandal that has trailed Facebook in the past weeks, the social network has halted its plans to match patients" data from hospitals to their accounts on Facebook, the BBC reported. Facebook has faced criticisms since the wake of the scandal with Cambridge Analytica about the improper sharing of users" private information. This has caused a significant setback and the Chief Executive Officer, Mark Zuckerberg said on Thursday that the social media platform had not made any meaningful revenue in ad sales since the wake of the scandal. The company had initially planned to collect information from patients in the hospital to match it with their information on the social network, but it is yet to receive any health records. Christina Farr from CBNC discovered the data sharing proposal. Two anonymous persons informed her that the social network had written proposal letters to health care centres and organisations including Stanford Medical School and the American Coll...

In the wake of the scandal involving the most extensive social network and the political consulting firm, it is likely that other software developers and internet companies will be investigated over how they share users" data. The latest decision to probe other tech giants will likely affect Alphabet Inc."s Google, Twitter, Uber Technologies, Snapchat, LinkedIn, and a host of many others that make users" data available to third-party developers, a similar case to what drove Facebook into the mess. Facebook allows numerous software developers to operate on its network, thereby granting them the access to harvest users" data. The main issue is how the collated data got into the hands of Cambridge Analytica. Given this, lawmakers in the US and the European Union have requested for an investigation into how the British firm was given the access to the data of 50 million users.  Notably, other internet companies are guilty of a similar offence because as long as user...

Facebook which acquired WhatsApp in 2014 made an official announcement of its intention to coordinate Facebook and WhatsApp to offer "better friend suggestions and show you more relevant ads if you have an account with them." While Facebook may be acting in good faith, the EU Commission thinks that this will constitute a breach of an existing data protection law. The UK has denied Facebook the access to allow UK citizens WhatsApp data beyond the purpose of chatting. The EU commission maintains that the Data Protection Act allows people the right to privacy and WhatsApp’s attempt to coordinate both Apps defeats the consumers" rights. Given this, WhatsApp has signed an undertaken that stipulates that they have given "a public commitment not to share personal data with Facebook until they can do so in compliance with the upcoming General Data Protection Regulation which comes into force in May this year." Read more: German Court Orders Facebook To Stop Collecting...