Mark Zuckerberg can’t catch a break. Ever since that infamous private information leak in April of 2018, Facebook is dealing with significant pressure from both the public and government. Zuckerberg desperately tried to look calm and confident during his Senate hearing, but users and investors are still suspicious. As it seems, rightfully so.
UpGuard is a cybersecurity company that regularly searches for vulnerabilities and weaknesses in various digital systems. When they inspected Amazon.com Inc.’s cloud service, they found a handful of private information records casually stored on Amazon Cloud. The sad part is that handful equals to 540 million records or 146 gigabytes worth of private data.
Information containing Facebook IDs, personal messages, likes, shares, and more could be obtained by anyone who bothered to search for it without any restrictions or meaningful security measures.
Recent investigations revealed that Facebook has been sharing all this information with third-parties and security was not a top priority. The director of cyber risk research at UpGuard Chris Vickery said: “the public doesn’t realize yet that these high-level systems administrators and developers… they are being either risky or lazy or cutting corners.”
This particular information was shared with a digital platform called Cultura Colectiva, a company that manufactures content about culture and celebrities for mostly Latin American users.
The most disturbing part of this whole ordeal is that only a year ago, on April 10 of 2018, Mark Zuckerberg testified in front of the Senate and claimed that his company is working to ensure that private data is secure. Only a year ago, he promised that the company would change its ways and focus on ensuring that they use private information responsibly.
As it turns out, the integrity of Facebook management is still questionable. Facebook is still leaking users as more and more people shift towards Instagram (owned by Facebook, by the way). Nonetheless, there are millions of users of Facebook whose personal information is in danger. Is it time for another Senate hearing where Mark Zuckerberg explains how 540 million records of private information appeared openly on Amazon Could?
