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Zuckerberg reveals his own data was stolen on second day at Congress

Zuckerberg reveals his own data was stolen on second day at Congress

The owner of Facebook was among those whose personal data was harvested, it has been revealed.

Mark Zuckerberg’s second day in the spotlight at Congress was harder going than the first, with the CEO facing a succession of tough questions and accusations. If the executive came out of the first day largely unscathed, the reaction to his second performance has been less forgiving, with observers accusing him of being evasive.

Among the revelations to emerge are new concerns about research projects at Cambridge University that may also pose a security risk to user data. Said Zuckerberg: “There were a number of other researchers building similar apps. So, we do need to understand whether there was something bad going on at Cambridge University overall that will require a stronger reaction from us."

Cambridge responded by saying that its ongoing work has been well documented in peer-reviewed scientific journals and that it would be surprised if Zuckerberg had not for a long time been well aware of the research that had been taking place.

Zuckerberg also admitted that the ongoing audit of existing apps to assess their data use could take “many months” to complete.

Word jousting

In a more heated moment, Zuckerberg refused to commit to defaulting all users privacy settings to high security, saying that it was a “complex issue” that required more than simply a yes or no answer.

Zuckerberg did however concede that he felt it was “inevitable” that new regulations would be needed to police online behaviour in the future.

"My position is not that there should be no regulation,” he stated. “But I also think you have to be careful about what regulation you put in place."

Zuckerberg was then grilled about the possibility of political bias within Facebook. He conceded that Silicon Valley as a whole was left-leaning, but stressed that his company was politically neutral.

There were even specific questions about the firing of former Oculus boss Palmer Luckey, whose departure came following a controversy linking him to a pro-Trump and anti-Hiliary propaganda campaign. Zuckerberg stated that Luckey was not fired due to his political views.

Another comparatively heated exchange led to the revelation that Facebook collected data on people who had never signed up for the service, which was something Zuckerberg claimed was done for “security purposes”.

"You said everyone controls their data," Democratic congressman Ben Ray Lujan said. "But you are collecting data on people that are not even Facebook users, that have never signed a consent or privacy agreement.”

Zuckerberg conceded that the company has “got to fix that”, but offered nothing more specific than that.


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