How to Check If Cambridge Analytica Had Your Facebook Data
Facebook launched a tool yesterday that lets you see if you or your friends have shared information with Cambridge Analytica, a Trump-affiliated company that has been collecting data from the Facebook app to support the then-2016 presidential candidate’s efforts.
If you’ve been hit directly – and you have a lot of businesses , if so – you should already have received a little notification from Facebook. If you missed this on your news feed (or you’ve already turned off Facebook but want to check if your information has been compromised), Facebook also has a handy little Cambridge Analytica tool that you can use.
Problem? While the tool can tell you if you or your friends have shared your information through the spamming application “This is Your Digital Life”, it will not tell you which of your friends was foolish enough to pass your information on to a third party. You’ve lost the ability to publicly shame them, yell at them, or go where they live (or start a remote desktop session) to teach them … never to do that again.
So what do you do now?
Even if your past Facebook data may already be somewhere on the digital airwaves, you can now start blocking your information a bit. When you’re done checking out the Cambridge Analytica tool, go here (Facebook settings page). Click Apps & Websites. Until recently, Facebook had a setting (under “Apps That Others Use”) that you could use to limit the information your friends can share about you to the apps they use. Instead, you will see this message:
“These obsolete settings were removed because they applied to an older version of our platform that no longer exists.
To view or change the information you are currently sharing with apps and websites, see the ones listed above in the “Signed in with Facebook” section above.
Sounds ominous, right? Well, according to Facebook , these settings haven’t done anything for years anyway. As a Facebook spokesman recently told Wired:
“These controls were created before we made significant changes to the way developers build apps on Facebook. At the time, the Other Application Use feature allowed people to control what information could be shared with developers. We changed our systems many years ago to prevent people from sharing friends’ information with developers unless each friend also explicitly gave the developer permission. “
Instead, spend a little time browsing (again) the apps you’ve allowed access to your Facebook information. If you no longer use an app, or it sounds a little suspicious, uninstall it – heck, uninstall as many apps as possible in one go.
For the nuclear option, click Change under the Apps, Websites & Games field and turn off the ability to sign in to any third-party app or services with Facebook. This will prevent you from deleting the data you have already shared, but it will block your Facebook from future requests.
Facebook itself is also in the process of making changes to limit the amount of data that authorized apps can access. As Ime Archibong, vice president of product partnerships, described in a post last week:
As part of our efforts to provide additional protection, we are changing the Facebook login. Last week we announced that access to the list of friends using the app now requires verification . Today we go further and protect sensitive permissions like photos and likes. This is powerful data and will require prior approval from Facebook to access your marks, likes, photos, posts, videos, events, and groups.
In addition, the following exceptions take effect immediately and return empty data, as if the person had not filled out this information in their profile:
Permissions: Religion & Politics, Relationship Status, Relationship Details, Individual Friends Lists, About Me, Education History, Work History, My Website URL, Book Reading Activity, Fitness Activity, Music Listening Activity, Video Watching Activity, Reading Activity news, games Activities.
APIs: Friends and mutual friends APIs .
Next week, if someone has not used the application for 90 days, the application will be blocked from accessing that person’s data until they authorize the application again. People will also be able to see their active apps in settings and uninstall any apps they no longer want to use.
Sit back, cross your fingers, and hope Facebook gets the next round of privacy updates right – or start updating your profile with bogus information (or just clear your profile) if you want your real demographics to remain private.