NEW: Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg says his personal data was included in data sold to “malicious third parties.” https://t.co/MwO8IkFNjH pic.twitter.com/YXI6iwtbB0
— Evan McMurry (@evanmcmurry) April 11, 2018
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg received a shellacking in the court of public opinion on Tuesday during his relatively breezy first day of congressional testimony, in which he was apparently prepared to attack another tech giant if things went south. Zuckerberg is currently giving testimony to the House Energy and Commerce Committee, and on his second day, he made a stunning claim — his personal data was also taken in the Cambridge Analytica breach:
Zuckerberg is meeting with the House Energy and Commerce Committee today, and Representative Anna Eshoo (D-CA) pressed him on whether he would change Facebook’s business model as part of his new measures for protecting user privacy. Eshoo also asked Zuckerberg if his personal data was sold to “malicious third parties” as a result of Cambridge Analytica’s data-harvest, and his answer was “yes.”
Eshoo also questioned whether possible future shift in Facebook’s business model would ever be in the cards, although Zuckerberg didn’t appear to know what Eshoo meant. Recently, Zuckerberg called Apple CEO Tim Cook “extremely glib” for questioning the Facebook business model, so perhaps this is another instance of Zuck scoring a point against his congressional grillers.
Last week, Facebook updated its estimates and claimed that over 87 million people, nearly 70 million of them Americans, had their data compromised by Cambridge Analytica. Facebook is slowly rolling out an alert to users whose data was affected, but has also quietly released a tool to let users find out for themselves, rather than wait any longer on a matter of privacy.
(Via The Guardian, ABC News & Mediaite)