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It’s Too Late

Wednesday, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg broke his silence about the scandal threatening his company, in which data analytics company Cambridge Analytica used data obtained using a third-party Facebook app to profile 50 million Americans and target them with ads for the Donald Trump campaign.

MIT’s Soft Robotic Fish Explores Reefs in Fiji

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Facebook ‘Made Mistakes,’ says Mark Zuckerberg in first words on Cambridge Analytica crisis

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg broke his silence on the Cambridge Analytica scandal. He admitted the social media company made mistakes, and pledged “to protect your data.”

Zuckerberg vows changes to Facebook after Cambridge Analytica scandal – CNET

Mark Zuckerberg has finally broken five days of silence on misused data from more than 50 million Facebook accounts, a controversy that’s consumed the social network over the past week.

Facebook’s Zuckerberg admits mistakes, outlines fixes

NEW YORK (AP) — Breaking five days of silence, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg admitted mistakes and outlined steps to protect user data in light of a privacy scandal involving a Trump-connected data-mining firm.Zuckerberg said Wednesday that Facebook has a “responsibility” to protect its users’ data and if it fails, “we don’t deserve to serve you.”But Zuckerberg stopped short of apologizing.And he wrote “what happened” instead of “what we did,” leaving Facebook one step removed from responsibility.Richard Levick, chairman of the crisis-management firm Levick, gave Zuckerberg’s response a “B-” grade, in part because of how late it came.Zuckerberg and Facebook’s No. 2 executive, Sheryl Sandberg, had been quiet since news broke Friday that Cambridge Analytica may have used data improperly obtained from roughly 50 million Facebook users to try to sway elections. Cambridge’s clients included Donald Trump’s general-election campaign.Facebook shares have dropped some 8 percent, lopping about $46 billion off the company’s market value, since the revelations were first published.Even before the scandal broke, Facebook has already taken the most important steps to prevent a recurrence, Zuckerberg said. For example, in 2014, it reduced access outside apps had to user data. However, some of the measures didn’t take effect until a year later, allowing Cambridge to access the data in the intervening months.Zuckerberg acknowledged that there is more to do.In a Facebook post on Wednesday, Zuckerberg said it will ban developers who don’t agree to an audit. An app’s developer will no longer have access to data from people who haven’t used that app in three months. Data will also be generally limited to user names, profile photos and email, unless the developer signs a contract with Facebook and gets user approval.In a separate post, Facebook said it will inform people whose data was misused by apps. Facebook first learned of this breach of privacy more than two years ago, but hadn’t mentioned it publicly until Friday.The company said it was “building a way” for people to know if their data was accessed by “This Is Your Digital Life,” the psychological-profiling quiz app that researcher Aleksandr Kogan created and paid about 270,000 people to take part in. Cambridge Analytica later obtained information from the app for about 50 million Facebook users, as the app also vacuumed up data on people’s friends – including those who never downloaded the app or gave explicit consent.Chris Wylie, a Cambridge co-founder who left in 2014, has said one of the firm’s goals was to influence people’s perceptions by injecting content, some misleading or false, all around them. It’s not clear whether Facebook would be able to tell users whether they had seen such content.Cambridge has shifted the blame to Kogan, which the firm described as a contractor. Kogan described himself as a scapegoat.Kogan, a psychology researcher at Cambridge University, told the BBC that both Facebook and Cambridge Analytica have tried to place the blame on him, even though the firm ensured him that everything he did was legal.“One of the great mistakes I did here was I just didn’t ask enough questions,” he said. “I had never done a commercial project. I didn’t really have any reason to doubt their sincerity. That’s certainly something I strongly regret now.”He said the firm paid some $800,000 for the work, but it went to participants in the survey.“My motivation was to get a dataset I could do research on,” he said. “I have never profited from this in any way personally.”Authorities in Britain and the United States are investigating.Sandy Parakilas, who worked in data protection for Facebook in 2011 and 2012, told a U.K. parliamentary committee Wednesday that the company was vigilant about its network security but lax when it came to protecting users’ data.He said personal data including email addresses and in some cases private messages was allowed to leave Facebook servers with no real controls on how the data was used after that.“The real challenge here is that Facebook was allowing developers to access the data of people who hadn’t explicitly authorized that,” he said, adding that the company had “lost sight” of what developers did with the data.—Danica Kirka and Gregory Katz reported from London.

The nuanced challenges of antitrust and AT&T-Time Warner

It’s been almost eighteen months since the boards of AT&T and Time Warner unanimously voted to sign an agreement to merge their two companies together and create a content and distribution powerhouse. That deal, pegged at $108 billion including debt from Time Warner, would be among the largest corporate mergers in American history. The U.S. Department of Justice sued to block the deal this past November, and now after long last, the antitrust trial that will determine the deal’s fate is about to start tomorrow with opening statements, following a snow delay today in Washington DC.

Slack Picked A Weird Time To Make It Easier For Bosses To Download Your Private Chats

Slack just updated its privacy policy and tools, and one of the changes may give some users pause. Under the new rules, Slack customers who pay for certain premium services will be able to download all the data from their workspace–both public and private–apparently without informing members of the community. Which is to say: Information from both private messages and room chats are fair game if the owner of the Slack wants it.

Mark Zuckerberg Finally Addresses The Massive Harvest Of Facebook Data

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg finally commented on the massive, deepening data harvesting scandal his company has been embroiled in since last Friday.

CRISC Domain 2: IT Risk Assessment

Connecting to the cyberspace offers convenience and opportunities for companies but also exposes them to risks. Fortunately, there are procedures that can be followed in order to protect data and…

Zuckerberg’s response to Cambridge scandal omits why it delayed investigating

“I started Facebook, and at the end of the day I’m responsible for what happens on our platform” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg posted after days of the public and government officials waiting for him to speak up about the Cambridge Analytica scandal since it broke Friday. “We have a responsibility to protect your data, and if we can’t then we don’t deserve to serve you.” COO Sheryl Sandberg wrote “we know that this was a major violation of people’s trust, and I deeply regret that we didn’t do enough to deal with it.”

10 Steps to Detect Lateral Movement in a Data Breach

Many enterprises spend millions of dollars on solutions that promise to bolster their security. However, much less focus is placed on the ability to detect lateral movement during a breach….

Computer Forensic Report Writing and Presentation

Introduction The demand for inter-networking keeps increasing amongst users and organizations where access to and sharing of data is a daily requirement. As if in resonance, the intention to…

Rockets’ Mike D’Antoni Calls James Harden ‘Best Offensive Player I’ve Ever Seen’

Michael Dwyer/Associated Press

Houston Rockets star James Harden may be on the verge of winning his first NBA MVP award this season, but his coach chooses to look at the bigger picture when talking about the player.

Here’s Mark Zuckerberg’s Response To The Cambridge Analytica Scandal

After New York Mag’s Select All beat Zuck to the punch with a parody of his usual “sorry not sorry” apology, the Facebook CEO posted a long note explaining the Cambridge Analytica situation — and promising a few concrete changes to the way users’ data is collected:

Crisis experts say Facebook has mishandled the data scandal

NEW YORK (AP) — The crisis-management playbook is pretty simple: Get ahead of the story, update authorities and the public regularly, accept responsibility and take decisive action. Crisis-management experts say that until Wednesday, Facebook was 0-for-4.Facebook’s two top executives, CEO Mark Zuckerberg and chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg, went radio silent after news broke last Friday that political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica may have used data improperly obtained from roughly 50 million Facebook users to try to sway elections, including the 2016 White House race.It was not until five days after the scandal erupted that Zuckerberg spoke up.Meanwhile, some Facebook users have been leaving the social network or mulling the possibility , and Facebook’s stock is down 9 percent since Friday.Facebook’s handling of the growing public-relations crisis is remarkable in that one of the world’s biggest companies seems not to be playing by well-established crisis-management rules.“This will go down as the textbook case study as how not to handle a crisis,” said Scott Galloway, a New York University professor of marketing. “The only thing we know about this and are comfortable predicting is that it’s going to get worse.”In his statement Wednesday – posted, of course, on Facebook – Zuckerberg acknowledged that mistakes were made, outlined changes the company has undertaken, and accepted responsibility for the problem.Experts said acknowledging accountability was a positive but the fact that Zuckerberg didn’t outright apologize is a negative.“My biggest skepticism is that we’ve seen this play before,” said Helio Fred Garcia, a professor of crisis management at NYU and Columbia University in New York. “They’re caught coming short of customers’ privacy expectations. They tweak procedures. But they don’t seem to learn from mistakes, don’t really seem to care.”Most Fortune 500 companies adhere to well-established crisis-management rules. When video surfaced of a passenger being dragged from an overbooked United Airlines flight last April, for example, CEO Oscar Munoz at first hedged but then apologized . When Pepsi ran an ad last spring featuring Kendall Jenner that appeared to trivialize the “Black Lives Matter” movement, the company pulled the ad , saying, “Clearly we missed the mark, and we apologize.”The point is to at least make an effort to seem remorseful to win back public trust, experts say. But despite user outcry on its own Facebook page and a call from Congress for Zuckerberg to testify about Facebook’s role in election-meddling, Facebook seems to be charting its own course.“At this point, ‘Why did you wait so long to make a statement?’ is now news in itself,” Paul Argenti, a business professor at Dartmouth, said before Zuckerberg spoke up.It’s a pattern Facebook has long followed, according to Garcia. Facebook hedged during its early days in 2007 over a controversial advertising program called Beacon that did not alert users it was sharing their activity, and it did so again in its response to Russian bots hijacking Facebook ad software during the Trump campaign in 2016.“Facebook has been too late. Facebook has done too little and has been too legalistic” each time, Garcia said. “I have yet to find a crisis Facebook handled that I could stand in front of crisis management classes and say, ‘Here’s an example of how to handle a crisis.’ They’ve never been able to handle a crisis.”Now that Zuckerberg has addressed the public, the PR flap may eventually be forgotten. But it will take a lot longer than if the company had addressed public concerns immediately, Garcia said.“It’s much harder to restore trust once it has been lost than to preserve trust before it has been lost,” he said.—This story has been corrected to show that Facebook’s ad program was 2007, not 1997, and that the data-mining story broke on Friday, not Sunday.

Zuckerberg Breaks Silence: ‘We Made Mistakes’ Regarding Cambridge Analytica Debacle

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Wednesday broke his silence on the Cambridge Analytica debacle that has unfolded over the past week, admitting “we made mistakes”. He vowed to step up to the plate when it comes to delivering better data security to Facebook users.

Mark Zuckerberg Finally Speaks About the Cambridge Analytica Scandal

Mark Zuckerberg has broken his silence on the acquisition of 50 million Facebook users’ personal information by Cambridge Analytica, the shadowy data analytics company that claims to have won the presidential election for Donald Trump.

Mark Zuckerberg Addresses the Cambridge Analytica Scandal, Says Facebook ‘Made Mistakes’ in Protecting Data

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Wednesday commented on the massive, deepening data harvesting scandal his company has been embroiled in since last Friday. From a report: “We have a responsibility to protect your data, and if we can’t then we don’t deserve to serve you. I’ve been working to understand exactly what happened and how to make sure this doesn’t happen again,” he said. The scandal — involving the illicit collection of data from 50 million Facebook users, and its later use by Trump campaign analytics vendor Cambridge Analytica — has helped chop off nearly $50 billion in value from Facebook’s market cap since last Friday, led to calls from US lawmakers for Zuckerberg testify before congress, and raised eyebrows at the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, which is now probing the company. Speaking of things Facebook plans to do to ensure that this mess doesn’t repeat itself, Zuckerberg added, “First, we will investigate all apps that had access to large amounts of information before we changed our platform to dramatically reduce data access in 2014, and we will conduct a full audit of any app with suspicious activity. We will ban any developer from our platform that does not agree to a thorough audit. And if we find developers that misused personally identifiable information, we will ban them and tell everyone affected by those apps. That includes people whose data Kogan misused here as well.

“Second, we will restrict developers’ data access even further to prevent other kinds of abuse. For example, we will remove developers’ access to your data if you haven’t used their app in 3 months. We will reduce the data you give an app when you sign in — to only your name, profile photo, and email address. We’ll require developers to not only get approval but also sign a contract in order to ask anyone for access to their posts or other private data. And we’ll have more changes to share in the next few days.”

The Latest: Zuckerberg admits mistakes, outlines steps

NEW YORK (AP) — The Latest on the alleged use of Facebook data to influence the U.S. presidential election (all times local):3:50 p.m.Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is admitting mistakes and outlining steps to protect user data in light of privacy scandal involving a Trump-connected data-mining firm.Zuckerberg is breaking more than four days of silence as he posts an update about the Cambridge Analytica scandal.Zuckerberg posted on his Facebook page Wednesday that Facebook has a “responsibility” to protect its users’ data, and “if we can’t then we don’t deserve to serve you.”Zuckerberg and Facebook’s No. 2 executive, Sheryl Sandberg, have been quiet since news broke Friday that Cambridge may have used data improperly obtained from roughly 50 million Facebook users to try to sway elections.—3 p.m.Kenya’s opposition says lawyers are poring through a British broadcaster’s investigation to see whether legal action is possible against data analytics firm Cambridge Analytica over its role in the country’s disputed presidential election last year.Cambridge Analytica already is being investigated by British and U.S. authorities over allegations the firm stole data from 50 million Facebook users and used it to manipulate elections.National Super Alliance Chief Executive Norman Magaya says a legal team will look into whether Cambridge Analytica was involved in what Kenya’s opposition claims is a hack of the electoral commission and manipulation of results in favor of President Uhuru Kenyatta.In the Channel 4 report this week based on undercover video, Cambridge Analytica took credit for stage-managing Kenyatta’s campaign. It denied any involvement in inflammatory videos targeting Kenyatta’s opponents. There was no discussion of mining Facebook data.—1:05 p.m.Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg plans to speak sometime in the next day with a “focus on rebuilding trust.”That’s according to a person familiar with the matter who was not authorized to speak publicly.The person gave no further details on timing or where Zuckerberg will speak. But the person said the CEO’s plan was “always to speak publicly” about Facebook’s latest privacy scandal, which involves Trump campaign consultants who allegedly stole data on tens of millions of Facebook users in order to influence elections.Criticism has been brewing as Zuckerberg and his No. 2 executive, Sheryl Sandberg, have been mum since the Cambridge Analytica story broke last Friday. Twitter users have been asking, using the “WhereIsZuck” hashtag.— Barbara Ortutay, New York—(previously from LONDON)4:35 p.m.The chairman of Romania’s ruling party says his Social Democratic Party did not hire Cambridge Analytica for its successful 2016 electoral campaign. And Cambridge Analytica itself reportedly said it did not work on the campaign, despite being interested.Liviu Dragnea told The Associated Press on Wednesday that he “categorically” did not hire Cambridge Analytica or its parent company SCL Group, a British strategic communications company.His comment came after a British consultant, Rupert Wolfe Murray, who was based in Romania at the time, said he was contacted by Mark Turnbull, a senior official at Cambridge Analytica, in August 2016.He said Turnbull had “offered to embed a two-person team” into the Social Democrats’ campaign team. Wolfe Murray said he declined the offer because he does not work for political parties.He says Turnbull later told him Cambridge Analytica did not work on the 2016 Romanian election.The Social Democrats won about 46 percent of the vote and the Liberals came second with 20 percent.Separately, investigative platform RISE project reported SCL Group set up an office in Romania in 2011, though it is not clear who they worked for.—3:15 p.m.The co-founder of WhatsApp, which was acquired by Facebook four years ago for $19 billion, has joined the movement to delete Facebook.Brian Acton tweeted: “It’s time. #deletefacebook.”That hashtag has been trending since reports surfaced in recent days regarding the improper use of personal information on Facebook by Cambridge Analytica, a political research firm used by the Trump campaign before the election.Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has remained silent as nearly $50 billion in market capitalization of his company has been wiped out with investors fearing new oversight by government regulators.—1:10 p.m.British Prime Minister Theresa May says allegations that Facebook users’ data was improperly used by political campaigns are “very concerning.”May says she expects Facebook and data analytics firm Cambridge Analytica to “comply fully” with British authorities investigating how personal information was obtained and used.May told lawmakers in the House of Commons that “people need to have confidence in how their personal data is used.”Authorities in Britain and the United States are investigating the alleged improper use of data harvested from tens of millions of Facebook users by Cambridge Analytica, which worked on U.S. President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign.May said that “as far as I’m aware” the British government has no contracts with Cambridge Analytica or its parent company, SCL.—12:30 p.m.A British consultant says Cambridge Analytica approached him before Romania’s 2016 parliamentary elections to work for the Social Democratic Party.Rupert Wolfe Murray told The Associated Press on Wednesday that Mark Turnbull, a senior official at Cambridge Analytica, contacted him in August 2016.He cited an email where Turnbull wrote: “What we have offered is to embed a two-person team into the current campaign team… to provide ongoing strategic advice and assistance across the campaign…. over the next 2-3 months.”Wolfe Murray said he declined the offer because he does not work for political parties. It was unclear whether Cambridge Analytica played a role in the Dec. 2016 elections, where the Social Democrats won about 46 percent of the vote. The Liberals came second with 20 percent.Separately, investigative platform RISE project reported that SCL Group, a British strategic communication company affiliated to Cambridge Analytica, set up an office in Romania in 2011.—12:20 p.m.A sell-off in Facebook shares is heading into the third consecutive day, with almost $50 billion in market capitalization evaporating since the start of the week.The stock fell 1.5 percent before the opening bell Wednesday and, after falling 9 percent, it’s one of the worst weeks in company history.Governments on both sides of the Atlantic are calling for CEO Mark Zuckerberg to testify on the issue, but he has been silent since a story broke Friday about how a firm tied to the campaign of Donald Trump improperly lifted data on 50 million Facebook users.That firm, Cambridge Analytica, suspended CEO Alexander Nix pending an investigation.—11:15 a.m.Company filings show that Trump-affiliated data-mining firm Cambridge Analytica has a link to a Chinese security and logistics company run by Erik Prince, the former mercenary who founded private military company Blackwater.British corporate records show that Alexander Nix, the suspended chief executive of Cambridge Analytica, is also director of a company called Emerdata Ltd. that was incorporated in August 2017.Other Emerdata directors include people associated with Cambridge Analytica, along with Johnson Ko Chun Shun, who was appointed in January.Ko is also deputy chairman of Hong Kong-based Frontier Services Group, whose chairman is Prince.FSG has attracted attention because of concerns Prince plans to provide special forces veterans to assist Chinese companies investing in risky locations overseas.China’s biggest state-owned company, Citic, is a major FSG shareholder.—9:40 a.m.The Cambridge University researcher who developed an app used by Cambridge Analytica to harvest data from millions of Facebook users claims he has been made a scapegoat.Alexandr Kogan told BBC on Wednesday he believed all the information he provided was obtained legitimately. He said he was approached by Cambridge Analytica, which is being investigated by British and U.S. authorities for possible misuse of data.He said: “They approached me. In terms of the usage of Facebook data they wrote the terms of service for the app, they provided the legal advice that this was all appropriate.”Kogan admitted he did not ask enough questions about the data use and did not have a lawyer review the agreement.Cambridge Analytica has suspended its top executive as possible misuse of data is checked.

Do You Know Of A Company Improperly Harvesting Data? Tell Us

On Saturday, the New York Times and the Observer of London published reports revealing that the voter analysis firm Cambridge Analytica improperly harvested private information from more than 50 million Facebook users without their permission, as it built the systems that would later guide the company’s work on the Brexit and Trump campaigns.