Facebook has done it again, another massive data leak has emerged from the depths of its platform and this time in a rather bizarre way, although that is not the only thing we should pay attention to.
It turns out that now the “Like” company has left the door open for more than 5000 application developers to obtain profile data from the platform illegally, although this time “by mistake” according to the company's own statement released. However, this makes it very clear that Facebook and its policies regarding security and access control to its users' data are still as weak as they were at the time of the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
The most ironic thing about all this is that Facebook is still determined to increase its power and presence in the lives of its users, this time through its digital currency Libra and its wallet Novi, formerly Calibra. The promises of proper management of private data and not using it to sell it to a third party are a central part of Facebook's attempts to make itself seen as a serious company that will be able to manage the economic and financial data of its potential 2500 billion users around the world. Can a company with this profile really manage such sensitive data in a reliable way? The company's actions and mistakes speak for themselves, and distrust grows due to Facebook's immense lack of transparency in this regard.
But not only that, Facebook has had a dark history of security and transparency throughout its life, starting with its changing and ambivalent policies, and worse still, its practices that have nothing to do with ethics. For example, the fact that find a serious bug in GNOME software due to an investigation VideosThe bug in question allowed a person's IP and location to be tracked through a specially modified video. At this point, the ethical thing to do was for Facebook to report the bug in order to fix it, but it never did. Basically, what Facebook did was hire a company to find a zero-day (a serious computer vulnerability) and buy that information.
Yet Facebook is trying to prove that it can take responsibility for the financial data of a third of the world's population. It asks us to install its wallet and make transactions in it, it asks us to become its "clientele" in what would be the world's largest digital bank, all the while demonstrating how little it cares about data security and privacy on its current platform, and doing nothing useful to remedy it.
Learn with Bit2Me Academy: What is Libra: Does Facebook have cryptocurrency?
"A tree that is born crooked, never straightens its trunk"
You've probably heard the saying:
A tree that is born crooked, never straightens its trunk.
The truth is that the quote is perfect for the performance that Facebook has shown throughout its history, and Mark Zuckerberg himself has demonstrated it by accepting that they even monitor those who do not have an account on their social network; a revelation that he made in a letter to the Senate in which he narrates these events and many others.
In fact, in the European Union, Facebook has acted very unethically (below its own standard). In 2018, for example, it was found extracting data from its users on the continent, sending them to other locations and selling that data, just to not comply with the GDPR. However, despite correcting this action, Facebook's failure to comply with this law leaves much to be desired.
These actions suggest that giving it access and power over our finances is “suicide against privacy.” It is giving immense power to a company that has proven to be the number one enemy of anything that can be called or said to be “private.”
Libra and Novi, Facebook's new surveillance tools
At this point, Facebook's digital currency project, Libra, is just another way for Facebook to get what it wants: our data, through which it can make money in ways never imagined. Because in this day and age of the 21st century, information is power, and Facebook wants a power that no one has ever had before. A power that, I dare say, not even the US government has come to possess.
When Libra and Calibra were announced, the crypto world immediately turned against them. Facebook’s track record spoke for itself, and the mere idea that this company had access to such data was already chilling. Even Facebook in its own documentation indicated privacy conditions identical to those that led to the Cambridge Analytica scandal, so the mere thought that its security policies were the same for Libra already generated aversion to the project.
It wasn't long before the same politicians in the US Congress and Senate stopped this titan, and since then, Libra has been more of a dream project than a reality. Even the recent attempt to open a messaging payment service using WhatsApp in Brazil was paralyzed.
Facebook has also been losing allies in its attempt to push Libra forward, and the new face of the project, Novi, has not received good reviews either. After all, it is still the same titan, just with a different name. In the end, Novi and Libra are still the new surveillance weapons that Facebook wants in its arsenal. And if we add to that the fact that it wants to keep all of this on a blockchain, where the data will be recorded in an “immutable” way, Facebook will be creating the most sophisticated mass surveillance tool in human history.
The million dollar question is: Will we fall into the trap? Personally, I hope not, because there is nothing more valuable than my life and my privacy.
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