Attorney General Jim Hood issued the following statement regarding his quiz of Facebook.
AG Hood Investigating Facebook’s User Privacy Practices
JACKSON—Attorney General Jim Hood sent a letter to Facebook, Inc. last week putting the social media giant on notice to preserve any relevant information for his investigation into the company’s user privacy practices in light of recent news about the company providing users’ personal information to third parties without users’ consent or knowledge. The investigation covers the time period starting in November 2013 and forward.
General Hood is investigating whether Facebook violated the Mississippi Consumer Protection Act when it gave permission to University of Cambridge Professor Aleksandr Kogan to harvest information of users who downloaded his app, thisisyourdigitallife. Types of information collected include user location, friends of the user, and user activity on the social media platform, which was then sold to a third party.
The letter sent to Facebook by General Hood served as a litigation hold notice, stating that parties have “a duty to preserve potentially relevant information that may be used as evidence in pending or reasonably foreseeable litigation.” It asked Facebook to preserve both paper and electronic documents that would provide information relating to this investigation, specifically “any and all documents and electronically stored information related to Dr. Aleksandr Kogan and his creation and use of an app called “thisisyourdigitallife” that used Facebook Login to pass data to a company called SCL/Cambridge Analytica.”
“Consumers are repeatedly being victimized by big business’ failure to properly safeguard their privacy rights,” said General Hood. “These companies are entrusted with our most personal information and need to be held accountable when they breach that trust. This is why we sued Google, which mined the data of students who used their educational software. We also took the issue to Congress, which just recently passed a bill that no longer gives immunity to websites that allow advertisers like backpage.com to advertise for child sex trafficking. Now we’re investigating Facebook, another everyday platform people use that is all the while collecting their personal information. Federal government is no longer big brother—these internet companies are big brother, and there have to be rules they must follow.”
Additionally, General Hood joined a bipartisan coalition with 36 state attorneys general in sending a separate letter to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, raising questions about the social networking site’s policies and practices, including:
· Were those terms of service clear and understandable?
· How did Facebook monitor what these developers did with all the data that they collected?
· What type of controls did Facebook have over the data given to developers?
· Did Facebook have protective safeguards in place, including audits, to ensure developers were not misusing the Facebook user’s data?
· How many users in the states of the signatory Attorneys General were impacted?
· When did Facebook learn of this breach of privacy protections?
· During this timeframe, what other third party “research” applications were also able to access the data of unsuspecting Facebook users?
As the attorneys general write in their letter to CEO Zuckerberg, news reports indicate the data of at least 50 million Facebook profiles may have been misused by third-party software developers. Facebook’s policies allowed developers to access the personal data of “friends” of people who used certain applications – without the knowledge or consent of these users.
General Hood reminds Mississippians to check the security settings on their social media accounts, paying close attention to any area that offers options for sharing data with applications connected to that social media platform. Users should also be vigilant of clicking on any links that they have not verified as a trusted source. For more consumer protection tips, visit agjimhood.com
21 comments:
And here comes the next round of "me too"
Hood can be a bit of a "Ambulance Chaser" at times.
When can we expect a check?,,,,,o wait any money will be put in the general fund,right.
Just curious why it dosn’t extend back to 2012 when Facebook did the same thing for the Obama Re-election committee?
We need an omnibus privacy law that addresses modern reality and our dependence on the internet for conducting our daily lives and our businesses. It is impossible to just "delete everything" and go "off the grid" and still be able to function in this economy, and I shouldn't have to give up every single aspect of my private life and confidential business information for that access.
12:35...they have it. too late. that genie is never going back in that bottle
To all of you idiots I have been calling out on facebook, I apologize, it was all in good fun.
It isn't impossible to not establish a Facebook account in the first place. Not impossible at all. Same goes for Twitter, Snapcrap, etc..
12:30, I was wondering the same thing. Looks like they picked the year very carefully.
A suspicious person would think there was a reason for that.
@whoever asked: because Obama wasn't/is't a russian traitor....
Sorry not Sorry!!!
Yes, they picked the date carefully, because that’s when the university of Cambridge professor created the quiz through which the data was stollen. You could pay attention. Or you could just keep screaming Obama.
No, because Hood still wants to keep his options open with all those Obama voters. Just like all the other 'group actions' he takes with other AG's, you will note that they are always ALL Democrat AG's and generally opposing an action of the current administration. Its all politics - added to the idea of funneling good lawsuits to the campaign coffers (which get converted to personal monies) of the AG's. Great system.
Sorry. No, not sorry!
A good Ole Govmnt Shakedown.
@ 1:05, you are exactly right! I don't have Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapcrap, etc. accounts, and I'm doing just fine. As as matter of fact, I would venture to say that I'm doing better than the average social media user, who faces a constant barrage of useless BS. I acknowledge that there are some useful benefits of social media, but the bad sure outweighs the good in my humble opinion.
"Call us to see what your case is worth. Offices in Jackson."
"I don't have Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapcrap, etc. accounts, and I'm doing just fine. As as matter of fact, I would venture to say that I'm doing better than the average social media user".
If you don't ascribe to any of those, how the hell do you call yourself a social media user? And if you're NOT one, how do you classify yourself as 'better' than one. I think you just pissed in your dark trousers.
Probably turn out much like the Russian investigation
More democrats will be found out to be crooks than any other party.
Controversy continues to swirl around how the consulting firm Cambridge Analytica obtained personal data from over 50 million Facebook users without their knowledge and used it to target ads to individuals in an effort to help Donald Trump be elected president in 2016.
But a more serious case of apparent misconduct involves Facebook data going to a different presidential campaign – this time in 2012. In this case, which is getting far less attention, Facebook reportedly voluntarily provided data on millions of its users to the re-election campaign of President Obama.
but but Obama, face it your boy dump is a traitor, your party leaders are derelict, yet you can't let go of the fake family values, pedophile party.
Sad.
This isn't just about Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, etc., it's about every app on your phone, the OS on your phone, every device you have to have an internet connection to use, software you can no longer purchase except in the "online" version...
Companies are building databases on you so robust that they know what you're going to do before you do it, and we're letting it happen because we like pics of our kids and funny cat videos. If the US government tried to do this, we'd have burned Washington to the ground, but we're willingly (although probably not knowingly) signing over our rights every time we click on a Terms of Use. The problem is, once you build such a database, the government (and actually bad guys) can get it and use it for really, really bad things.
8:49 - You do realize every time you connect to or post on this blog you are opening a back-door portal to all of your confidential information. Well, don't you? The 'robot test' is nothing other than a means to mine your bank account, what you've Googled, the women you email and what recipes you have filed away.
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