Mea Culpa

21 March 2018 By Robert Cyran, Jennifer Saba Follow @rob_cyran

The Facebook founder finally explained how users’ information was harvested – four days after it was revealed by press reports. But his promise to tighten controls rings hollow. The trouble is the social network is built on data. Truly securing it may blow up its business.

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Mark Zuckerberg said on March 21 that Facebook had made mistakes in how it handled customer data after information from about 50 million users ended up at data-analytics firm Cambridge Analytica. “We have a responsibility to protect your data, and if we can’t then we don’t deserve to serve you,” the Facebook founder said in a post, in which he pledged to address the issue.

News reports that Cambridge Analytica had harvested information from Facebook customers without their permission broke on March 17.

Zuckerberg said Facebook will audit apps that had access to large amounts of information prior to 2014, when the company tightened rules on access to user data. It will also put in place new restrictions on developers' access to data. Facebook will also provide a new tool making it easier for users to see which apps have access to their information, and to revoke that access.

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