On Thursday, Canadian officials
said that owing to its assailable security algorithms, Facebook exposed sensitive
information of millions of its users. It has been counted as a critical failure
on the company’s part which it did admit to letting happen but denied to fix.
Facebook has violated local as
well as national laws when it gave access to private data of millions of its
users to third parties, according to an investigation conducted by the information
and privacy commissioner of British Columbia and the privacy commissioner for Canada.
The company CEO, Mark Zuckerberg
put forth an apology for the major breach of trust that happened in the
political scandal associated with Cambridge Analytica, however, they did not
take into consideration the issued recommendations regarding the prevention of
further exploitation of user data.
Putting the same into
perspective, at a news conference, Daniel Therrien, head at federal privacy
watchdog, said, “There’s a significant gap between what they say and what they
do,”
As
the regulators decided to push Facebook to a Canadian federal court which is likely
to impose fines on the company, Mr. Therrien told that, “historically there have
been very small penalties — in the tens of thousands of dollars.”
Facebook told the investigators that it does not agree with their findings, in response, Mr. Therrien said, “I find that absolutely untenable that a company can
tell a regulator that it does not respect its findings.”
Furthermore,
he asserted the need to have more authorities for the inspection of companies
and even strict privacy laws in the North American country, Canada.
Reportedly, Facebook has denied
audits of its privacy procedures and said that it has taken necessary measures
against the problems raised by the investigators.
Referenced from the statements given
by Facebook on the account, “there’s no evidence that Canadians’ data was
shared with Cambridge Analytica, and we’ve made dramatic improvements to our
platform to protect people’s personal information.”
“After many months of good-faith cooperation
and lengthy negotiations, we are disappointed” that regulators consider the
issues raised in this report unresolved,” the company added.
