Other tech firms also harvest users’ data, Facebook argues

Facebook has been under the spotlight after the data breach scandal that involved political consultancy Cambridge Analytica ( CA ) surfaced. In fact, Facebook is not the only one that gathers its users’ personal information.

In its blog post, Facebook Product Management Director David Baser described more detail about how the company collected its users’ data and how they used it.

“Many companies offer these types of services and, like Facebook , they also get information from the apps and sites that use them. Twitter, Pinterest and Linkedin all have similar Like and Share buttons to help people share things on their services. Alphabet has a popular analytics service. And Amazon , Alphabet and Twitter all offer login features.”

Baser also added that Alphabet could track its users' information such as websites they visit, IP cookies and addresses, as well as data on their browser and operating system.

A lot of websites make use of Facebook ’s analytics service, which allows others to get information from users who visit an app or a site. The company’s notorious”Pixel” tool, for example. It is a software code used to track users’ activity from sites they visit and duration they visit the website and what for.

Facebook blocks third-party apps

The controversial scandal between Facebook and CA triggered the former to take cautious measures to prevent the same thing from happening again. Facebook previously banned data form Cubeyou following the data leakage affecting the social network’s personal information.

Cubeyou harvested users’ data through personality quizzes, which was misleadingly used for”academic research, CNBC reported.

Indonesian Minister of Information Technology and Communication Rudiantara claimed Indonesian users' data had not only been shared unlawfully to CA , but also to Cubeyou. But the minister has yet to provide the detail about the amount of the leaked data shared to both CA and Cubeyou.

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