San Francisco, May 15: A data set of over 3 million Facebook users collected via a personality app was available to download freely for anyone for almost four years, New Scientist reported.
The data set was collected via the personality quiz app "myPersonality" by academics at the University of Cambridge.
"The data was highly sensitive, revealing personal details of Facebook users, such as the results of psychological tests.
"It was meant to be stored and shared anonymously, however such poor precautions were taken that deanonymising would not be hard," the report said.
The data sets were controlled by David Stillwell and Michal Kosinski at the University of Cambridge.
"More than 6 million people completed the tests on the myPersonality app and nearly half agreed to share data from their Facebook profiles with the project," said the report.
Alexandr Kogan, at the centre of the British political consultancy firm Cambridge Analytica scandal, was previously part of the project.
"Cambridge Analytica had approached the myPersonality app team in 2013 to get access to the data, but was turned down because of its political ambitions," the report said.
Facebook last month suspended "myPersonality" from its platform, saying the app may have violated its policies.
The social media giant on Monday said that is auditing each and every app that has access to the data of its users and has already suspended 200 apps which failed to comply with its policies.
The company CEO Mark Zuckerberg had promised a thorough investigation and audit into apps that had access to information before Facebook changed its platform policies in 2014 -- significantly reducing the data apps could access.
"To date, thousands of apps have been investigated and around 200 have been suspended -- pending a thorough investigation into whether they did in fact misuse any data," Facebook said.
If Facebook finds evidence that these or other apps did misuse data, it will ban them and notify users via Help Centre on its website.
Appearing before the US Congress in April, Zuckerberg told lawmakers that his own personal data was part of 87 million Facebook users that was improperly shared with Cambridge Analytica.
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Bidar, July 26: The young woman who has accused BJP MLA Prabhu Chavan's son, Prateek Chavan, of cheating her with a false promise of marriage, has raised concerns over police inaction and sought the intervention of Karnataka Chief Minister.
Speaking to reporters in Bengaluru, the Maharashtra-based woman alleged that despite filing a case days ago, Prateek has not been arrested. “I feel the police are not arresting him because he is the son of a powerful MLA. We are poor people and they are rich, so they are trying to crush us. The police have also filed a counter case against my family after I filed the complaint,” she said.
She urged Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah to personally intervene. “We request the Chief Minister to call us and discuss this issue. I want justice. The law should be the same for everyone, regardless of who they are,” the woman added.
The complaint was lodged in connection with alleged cheating under the pretext of marriage.