Former Facebook employee says that Data harvesting was normal

Facebook has been on the sport after reports emerged that companies like Cambridge Analytica were using data from Facebook users without their knowledge. A senior operations manager at Facebook who was in charge of third-party software developers between 2011-2012 said that he had warned the company’s senior management about its approach to data protection and that it would cause a major breach.

According to Sandy Parakilas: “I was particularly concerned that the data that had left Facebook servers to developers could not be monitored anymore by Facebook because we did not have any idea of what the developers were doing with the data.” According to the former manager, the terms and conditions used by Facebook could not be easily understood by its users and the company did not have appropriate measures which would include audits to ensure that its data was not being misused.

He went on to state that Facebook did not have any control over data given to developers and when he told to management to do an audit to investigate what developers do with the data he was discouraged and told not to continue with the agenda.

Parakilas first raised his concerns about the privacy of Facebook data publicly four months ago, but Facebook defended itself saying that they had improved their data sharing practices over the previous five years.

It’s believed that Facebook might have been selling the data for analysis to different companies. Actually, Facebook used to take 30% of payments made through applications and in return the company would allow the companies to use Facebook user data. The former employee who now works as a product manager at uber believes that the companies which were allowed to access user data could be in thousands. He concludes by saying that all the harvested data was done without the knowledge of the users.