Speaker 1: Facebook cracks down on data abuse. I'm Rich Dmiro. This
Speaker 1: is Rich on Tech Daily. So Facebook has spoken out
Speaker 1: about the big breach of data and trust when it
Speaker 1: comes to their users. CEO Mark Zuckerberg made a Facebook
Speaker 1: post explaining how we got here, what happened, and what
Speaker 1: Facebook is going to do in the future to prevent
Speaker 1: any more abuse of data. So number one, the company
Speaker 1: explained that they really changed the rules back in twenty
Speaker 1: fourteen so that this sort of thing can't really happen anymore.
Speaker 1: But they're going to clamp down even further. So let's
Speaker 1: go back a little bit. When Facebook started. The whole
Speaker 1: point of Facebook was that it was different. Not only
Speaker 1: did they have all of your social data in there,
Speaker 1: but third party apps could use your data to kind
Speaker 1: of make those apps better. So if you have a
Speaker 1: calendar app, it can populate that app with your friend's birthdays,
Speaker 1: for example. But to do that, you had to log
Speaker 1: in and give approval to saying hey, you can use
Speaker 1: my information and all the information of my friends as well. Now,
Speaker 1: in twenty fourteen, Facebook kind of changed that because they
Speaker 1: saw that this thing was expanding in a big way
Speaker 1: and they said, you know what, we need to make
Speaker 1: more granular permissions for this kind of stuff. So if
Speaker 1: it's a photo sharing app, we need to get specific
Speaker 1: permission from you to access your photos. So they started
Speaker 1: making things a little bit more siloed, so if an
Speaker 1: app wanted access to your photos, they'd have to ask
Speaker 1: for it. If they wanted access to your likes, they
Speaker 1: would have to ask for it instead of just getting
Speaker 1: everything all at once. Facebook says, even with all these changes,
Speaker 1: they've still seen abuse of the platform and misuse of
Speaker 1: people's data. So now they're going to make changes to
Speaker 1: prevent further abuse. So here's all the changes they talk about.
Speaker 1: Number One, they're reviewing their platform. They're going to investigate
Speaker 1: all apps that had access to large amounts of information
Speaker 1: before they changed things up in twenty fourteen. If they
Speaker 1: find that developers misused any information, they're going to ban
Speaker 1: them from making future apps, which is interesting. They're going
Speaker 1: to also tell people about data misuse. So if Facebook
Speaker 1: in its you know, analytics, figures out that some app
Speaker 1: is misusing information, they're actually going to tell you users.
Speaker 1: Facebook probably had an idea about all this stuff way
Speaker 1: before we did, and that's because their computers are constantly
Speaker 1: monitoring all this data that's being moved around. So moving forward,
Speaker 1: if Facebook detects something like this and they remove an app,
Speaker 1: they're actually going to tell everyone who use that app
Speaker 1: about it. They're also going to turn off access for
Speaker 1: unused apps. This is probably the best and biggest change
Speaker 1: they're making. So let's say you take one of those
Speaker 1: personality quizzes and then you forget about it, right, you
Speaker 1: do the personality quiz or the celebrity lookalike quiz, and
Speaker 1: you totally forget that you connected this to your Facebook account.
Speaker 1: If you don't use an app within three months, they're
Speaker 1: going to turn off that app's access to your information.
Speaker 1: That is huge, and it won't affect things like if
Speaker 1: you've connected to Netflix or a Pandora or something like that,
Speaker 1: because you're logging in with that all the time, but
Speaker 1: it will affect these kind of rogue apps that want
Speaker 1: to get your information and for as long as possible,
Speaker 1: so that's huge. Facebook is also changing the way Facebook
Speaker 1: login works. So if you listen to this podcast before
Speaker 1: you know that I said I don't really like using
Speaker 1: Facebook to log into third party sites. So let's say
Speaker 1: you sign up for something like Pandora and it says, hey,
Speaker 1: use Facebook to log in. I like when you make
Speaker 1: separate accounts for everything. That way things are less connected. Well,
Speaker 1: Facebook says they are going to change log in so
Speaker 1: that they're going to reduce the data and app can request.
Speaker 1: So mainly apps only get your name, your profile photo,
Speaker 1: and your email address, but if they want any other data,
Speaker 1: they're going to have to specifically request it and get
Speaker 1: approval for that. So instead of getting your data, birth,
Speaker 1: your like list, your friends list, all that stuff, that
Speaker 1: will take kind of a bigger level of approval. Also,
Speaker 1: Facebook is now going to encourage people to manage the
Speaker 1: apps that they use. So right now you can go
Speaker 1: in and, like we've talked about, you can see all
Speaker 1: the apps that are connected to your account, but actually
Speaker 1: finding that list of apps was not very easy. So
Speaker 1: Facebook is going to put a new tool right at
Speaker 1: the top of people's news feeds that they can see
Speaker 1: the apps that are connected and disconnect those apps very quickly.
Speaker 1: There you have it, some of the changes Facebook is
Speaker 1: making to crack down on abuse of its platform and
Speaker 1: to better protect your privacy. If you want a link
Speaker 1: to check out the third party apps that have access
Speaker 1: to your Facebook data currently and instructions on how to
Speaker 1: disconnect those go to my website Rich on tech dot
Speaker 1: tv and if you enjoy this podcast, please rate and
Speaker 1: review me in the Apple Podcasts app. That way more
Speaker 1: people discover the podcast. Thanks so much for listening on
Speaker 1: Rich jamiro Rich on tech dot tv. Talk to you
Speaker 1: real soon