Recently, Facebook parent company Meta’s WhatsApp rolled out a new feature that allows adding 32 contacts in a group voice calls. As we saw in the past, Meta-owned Facebook was involved in many privacy controversies, for no user data privacy and selling user’s data, but the latest leaked file stated Facebook’s “data lineage” problems.
Facebook Has No Control On User Data, According to Leaked File
Last year, The report was written by Privacy engineers and the Business Product team of the Facebook Ad team to the Company’s leaders. Engineers also believed there were some problems with current policies. According to a leaked document, Facebook’s policies have “open borders” for user data in which first-party user data, third-party data, and even sensitive information are all stored together, which makes it really hard to manage the specific data and engineers’ demand for the changes to this existing system. The engineers warn them about this system’s regulations; it seems really a misconception and causes issues with the regulation in some regions, Egypt, India, the EU, South Africa, South Korea, Thailand, and the US. Privacy engineers said in the document, “We do not have an adequate level of control and explainability over how our systems use data, and thus we can’t confidently make controlled policy changes or external commitments such as ‘we will not use X data for Y purpose.’ And yet, this is exactly what regulators expect us to do, increasing our risk of mistakes and misrepresentation”. Besides, The report originator Motherboard spoke anonymously to a former Facebook employee who said on the question of where data goes inside the company is “broadly speaking, a complete shitshow“. The Motherboard also reached out to the Facebook spokesperson, who completely denied that the company is not complying with regulators. Additionally, the Meta plans to open its first physical retail store in Burlingame, California, on May 9.
