FB FAILED 30 MILLION USERS DATA BEING HARVESTED BY TRUMP CAMPAIGN AFFILIATE

FACEBOOK FAILED TO PROTECT 30 MILLION USERS FROM HAVING THEIR DATA HARVESTED BY TRUMP CAMPAIGN AFFILIATE

Mattathias Schwartz 3/30/2017

IN 2014, TRACES of an unusual survey, connected to Facebook, began appearing on internet message boards. The boards were frequented by remote freelance workers who bid on “human intelligence tasks” in an online marketplace, called Mechanical Turk, controlled by Amazon. The “turkers,” as they’re known, tend to perform work that is rote and repetitive, like flagging pornographic images or digging through search engine results for email addresses. Most jobs pay between 1 and 15 cents. “Turking makes us our rent money and helps pay off debt,” one turker told The Intercept. Another turker has called the work “voluntary slave labor.”

The task posted by “Global Science Research” appeared ordinary, at least on the surface. The company offered turkers $1 or $2 to complete an online survey. But there were a couple of additional requirements as well. First, Global Science Research was only interested in American turkers. Second, the turkers had to download a Facebook app before they could collect payment. Global Science Research said the app would “download some information about you and your network … basic demographics and likes of categories, places, famous people, etc. from you and your friends.”

“Our terms of service clearly prohibit misuse,” said a spokesperson for Amazon Web Services, by email. “When we learned of this activity back in 2015, we suspended the requester for violating our terms of service.”

... read the whole thing ... 

WI 1848 Forward: #FB FAILED 30M USERS DATA BEING HARVESTED BY# TRUMP CAMPAIGN AFFILIATE -2016 #election interference ... now 87 million affected 4/4/2018