Facebook rolling out privacy choices under EU rules

The European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is a new data protection law that will enter into force on May 25, 2018.

It aims to strengthen and unify data protection for all individuals within the European Union (EU).

This means cracking down on how companies like Google and Facebook use and sell the data they collect on their users.

The law will mark the biggest overhaul of personal data privacy rules since the birth of the internet.

Under GDPR, companies will be required to report data breaches within 72 hours, as well as to allow customers to export their data and delete it.

The European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is a new data protection law that will enter into force on May 25. It aims to crack down on how companies like Google and Facebook use and sell the data they collect on their users

Part of the expanded rights of data subjects outlined by the GDPR is the right for data subjects to obtain from the data controller confirmation as to whether or not personal data concerning them is being processed, where and for what purpose. 

Further, the controller must provide a copy of the personal data, free of charge, in an electronic format. This change is a dramatic shift to data transparency and empowerment of data subjects.

Under the right to be forgotten, also known as Data Erasure, are entitled to have the data controller erase their personal data, cease further dissemination of the data, and potentially have third parties halt processing of the data. 

The conditions for erasure include the data no longer being relevant to original purposes for processing, or a data subject withdrawing their consent. 

This right requires controllers to compare the subjects’ rights to ‘the public interest in the availability of the data’ when considering such requests.

Communications firms Cambridge Analytica has offices in London, New York, Washington, as well as Brazil and Malaysia.

The company boasts it can ‘find your voters and move them to action’ through data-driven campaigns and a team that includes data scientists and behavioural psychologists.

‘Within the United States alone, we have played a pivotal role in winning presidential races as well as congressional and state elections,’ with data on more than 230 million American voters, Cambridge Analytica claims on its website.

The company profited from a feature that meant apps could ask for permission to access your own data as well as the data of all your Facebook friends.

The data firm suspended its chief executive, Alexander Nix (pictured), after recordings emerged of him making a series of controversial claims, including boasts that Cambridge Analytica had a pivotal role in the election of Donald Trump

This meant the company was able to mine the information of 55 million Facebook users even though just 270,000 people gave them permission to do so.

This was designed to help them create software that can predict and influence voters’ choices at the ballot box.

The data firm suspended its chief executive, Alexander Nix, after recordings emerged of him making a series of controversial claims, including boasts that Cambridge Analytica had a pivotal role in the election of Donald Trump.

This information is said to have been used to help the Brexit campaign in the UK.

News that Trump-affiliated company Cambridge Analytica used data mined from Facebook user’s to try and influence the US presidential election may trigger a wave of lawsuits, according to experts. 

Vanessa Barnett, a commercial lawyer and data protection expert at Keystone Law, believes it’s ‘very likely’ we will see a slew of legal cases against the firms in the wake of the scandal.

Speaking to MailOnline, she said: ‘In the UK, users can take direct action for damages caused to them by a data breach – and that includes damages for distress. 

‘How that translates into a “pounds, shillings, pence” type number for each person would depend on the nature of the damage.’ 

‘We have case law where the Home Office revealed personal data of asylum seekers, including potentially where they lived. Some of those individuals were awarded £12,500 ($14,000) in damages.

‘It remains to be seen if the damage caused by the Cambridge Analytica scandal is comparable.’

Ms Barnett says that a number of consumer rights focused groups are looking at the possibility of a class action lawsuit, a more regular feature of the US legal system than in the UK.

A class action lawsuit filed against the firm in America is now seeking compensation for the roughly 70 million US users who were affected.

Ms Barnett added: ‘Years ago we just had Max Schrems vs Facebook, and he didn’t do too bad, but now it’s much more in the public consciousness. 

‘If the mechanics to participate in a class action are easy, I can see many users joining in.’ 

Facial recognition is increasingly used as way to access your money and your devices.

When it comes to policing, it could soon mean the difference between freedom and imprisonment.

Faces can be scanned at a distance, generating a code as unique as your fingerprints. 

This is created by measuring the distance between various points, like the width of a person’s nose, distance between the eyes and length of the jawline.

Facial recognition systems check more than 80 points of comparison, known as ‘nodal points’, combining them to build a person’s faceprint.

These faceprints can then be used to search through a database, matching a suspect to known offenders.

Facial recognition is increasingly used as way to access your money and your devices. When it comes to policing, it could soon mean the difference between freedom and imprisonment (stock)

Facial scanning systems used on personal electronic devices function slightly differently, and vary from gadget to gadget.

The iPhone X, for example, uses Face ID via a 7MP front-facing camera on the handset which has multiple components.

One of these is a Dot Projector that projects more than 30,000 invisible dots onto your face to map its structure.

The dot map is then read by an infrared camera and the structure of your face is relayed to the A11 Bionic chip in the iPhone X, where it is turned into a mathematical model.

The A11 chip then compares your facial structure to the facial scan stored in the iPhone X during the setup process.  

Security cameras use artificial intelligence powered systems that can scan for faces, re-orient, skew and stretch them, before converting them to black-and-white to make facial features easier for computer algorithms to recognise.

Error rates with facial recognition can be as low as 0.8 per cent. While this sounds low, in the real world that means eight in every 1,000 scans could falsely identify an innocent party..

One such case, reported in The Intercept, details how Steven Talley was falsely matched to security footage of a bank robber.

All 2.2 billion Facebook users began to receive a notification automatically at the top their newsfeed after it was launched on Tuesday, April 10, a day later than expected.

Titled ‘Protecting Your Information,’ it contains a link to let you see what apps you use and what information you have shared with them.

Affected users are automatically presented with a notice that says: ‘We have banned the website “This Is Your Digital Life,” which one of your friends used Facebook to log into.

‘We did this because the website may have misused some of your Facebook information by sharing it with a company called Cambridge Analytica.’ 

Users can then click on a ‘See how you’re affected’ button to find out more as well as to remove permission for apps and websites you’ve logged into via Facebook to have access to your profile. 

For those not affected by the Cambridge Analytica incident the message reads: ‘You can go to the Apps and Websites section of your settings anytime to see the apps and websites you’ve used Facebook to log into.’

The ‘Go to apps and websites’ button will provide quick access to review and amend these permissions. 

A separate ‘How can I tell if my info was shared with Cambridge Analytica?’ tool will also resolve the question for you.

To manually access this tool, click the link here. 

Users not believed to be affected will see the message ‘Based on our available records, neither you nor your friends logged into “This Is Your Digital Life.”

‘As a result, it doesn’t appear your Facebook information was shared with Cambridge Analytica by “This Is Your Digital Life”.’

Affected users will see a different message and they will be asked to to change their app settings, available here.

This is something that is still advisable for the security conscious, removing permissions for apps you no longer need or don’t recognise.

Facebook is not notifying individual users of the identify of friends who may have used the ‘This Is Your Digital Life’ app.