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Alex Stamos, Facebook’s chief security officer who helped track down how Russia harnessed the network for its 2016 disinformation campaign, is under a spotlight and reportedly set to resign later this year amid fallout over the social network's work with a data mining firm used by the Trump campaign. The social network is reeling from revelations that data for 50 million users was harvested by Cambridge Analytica, and facing renewed scrutiny from lawmakers on both sides of the Atlantic, putting Stamos’s future at Facebook in doubt.

A group of Israeli contractors, code-named "Team Jorge," has been exposed in an undercover investigation for allegedly manipulating over 30 global elections, using tactics including hacking, sabotage and the use of automated misinformation on social media. Reporters from 30 international media outlets, including Der Spiegel, Le Monde, El País and The Guardian, were part of the consortium that conducted the investigation. Forbidden Stories, a French non-profit organisation that aims to continue the work of journalists who have been assassinated, threatened, or imprisoned, coordinated the project. According to The Guardian, three reporters approached Team Jorge as potential clients and filmed footage...

Facebook parent company Meta has agreed to pay $725 million to settle a class-action lawsuit claiming it improperly shared users' information with Cambridge Analytica, a data analytics firm used by the Trump campaign.The proposed settlement is a result of revelations in 2018 that information of up to 87 million people may have been improperly accessed by the third-party firm, which filed for bankruptcy in 2018. This is the largest recovery ever in a data privacy class action and the most Facebook has paid to settle a private class action, the plaintiffs' lawyers said in a court filing Thursday.Meta did not...

Should you log in with Facebook or Google on other sites or apps? Short answer: No. You’ve probably seen it on lots of apps and websites: buttons urging you to sign in with your Google or Facebook account. Sometimes it’s to let you share files, photos or emails. Other times it’s to use Google or Facebook as a quick way to log in ... My rule of thumb is to just say no. There are too many ways using these buttons can leak personal information or help Big Tech track you. There are some exceptions when it’s useful — but...

The nation argued for five years over the infamous “Steele dossier,” the document on which the Federal Bureau of Investigation relied to investigate Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign. It should have been called the Clinton dossier. Special counsel John Durham this week obtained an indictment of Igor Danchenko, a Russian who provided information for the dossier. ---SNIP--- Never forget the original claim. According to the FBI, Democrats and the media, Mr. Trump harbored secret and nefarious ties with Russia. We knew that because—as Mother Jones explained in a 2016 article that became the reigning story line— Christopher Steele was a “credible...

WATCH #SHADOWGATE LIVESTREAMING NOW!! DOWNLOAD IT ASAP when it finishes! This documentary is what got Millie Weaver arrested this morning because the Deep State doesn’t want this information out in public!!

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has voted to approve fining Facebook approximately $5 billion as a penalty for the company's privacy violations in the Cambridge Analytica scandal, The Guardian reported. According to the Washington Post, an anonymous source familiar with the issue said Friday that the settlement was approved 3-2, and that the Justice Department is expected to approve the move. In addition to the fine, which would be the highest ever levied by the FTC against a technology company and the highest ever levied for a privacy violation, Facebook will reexamine how it handles user data. The Washington Post...

A man sets himself on fire Wednesday on the Ellipse in downtown Washington, across from the White House, the Secret Service said. A spokesman for the Washington Fire Department tells CNBC, “I can confirm that we’ve transported one patient with burns from the Ellipse and we’re now on the scene assisting law enforcement,” referring to Park Police and U.S. Secret Service officers. Alina Berzins says she was visiting the National Mall with two of her cousins from Bolivia when “we saw this man” on the Ellipse and “he starts running, and then we saw him covered in flames.”

In the early days of the Trump administration, a memo of uncertain origin circulated at the highest levels of the White House laying out a conspiracy theory about "coordinated attacks" on President Trump's foreign policy agenda from a group of former Obama administration officials, according to a memo obtained by The New Yorker's Adam Entous and Ronan Farrow. The memo, which "reads like a U.S. military-intelligence officer's analysis of a foreign-insurgent network," they wrote, posited that "the communications infrastructure ... used to sell ObamaCare and the Iran Deal to the public ('Echo Chamber') has been shifted from the White House...

Parliament has used its legal powers to seize internal Facebook documents in an extraordinary attempt to hold the US social media giant to account after chief executive Mark Zuckerberg repeatedly refused to answer MPs’ questions. The cache of documents is alleged to contain significant revelations about Facebook decisions on data and privacy controls that led to the Cambridge Analytica scandal. It is claimed they include confidential emails between senior executives, and correspondence with Zuckerberg. Damian Collins, the chair of the culture, media and sport select committee, invoked a rare parliamentary mechanism to compel the founder of a US software company,...

Facebook investors have called on the company’s chief executive Mark Zuckerberg to step down as chairman, following reports that the company hired a public relations firm to smear its critics by drawing links to George Soros. The attack on Mr Zuckerberg is set to complicate the daunting challenge facing Sir Nick Clegg, Facebook's new global head of policy and communications, who joined last month and has been asked to conduct a review of Facebook's use of lobbying firms. Jonas Kron, a senior vice president at Trillium Asset Management, a US investor which owns an £8.5m stake in Facebook, last night...

FACEBOOK TROUBLES GROW – FACING LAWSUIT LIABILITIES OF ...BILLIONS? 30-plus complaints piled up just over Cambridge Analytica The investor and consumer doubts that sparked a near-20 percent plunge in its market value – some $100 billion plus – isn’t the only concern for the giant web company Facebook these days. A report at PJMedia outlines the billions in liabilities the company may have because of a number of crises in recent months. One was the scandal over allowing Cambridge Analytica to breach its users’ privacy and collect data for political purposes. “The company is facing massive fines and possible government...

According to a recent report, some Facebook investors are becoming tired of CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s style of running the company and may be considering a coup. Just a few months ago, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg testified before Congress about the Cambridge Analytica data scandal. Shortly before this, during a call with members of the media, including Breitbart News, one reporter asked Zuckerberg whether or not there had been a discussion amongst board members about replacing Zuckerberg as chairman of the company. Zuckerberg paused shortly and gave a short, clipped answer: “Not that I’m aware of.” According to a recent report...

President Donald Trump rejects the narrative that Russia wanted him to win. USA Today examined each of the 3,517 Facebook ads bought by the Russian-based Internet Research Agency, the company that employed 12 of the 13 Russians indicted by special counsel Robert Mueller for interfering with the 2016 election. It turns out only about 100 of its ads explicitly endorsed Trump or opposed Hillary Clinton. Most of the fake ads focused on racial division, with many of the ads attempting to exploit what Russia perceives, or wants America to perceive, as severe racial tension between blacks and whites. Think of...

Political consulting group Cambridge Analytica used Russian researchers and shared data with companies linked to Russian intelligence, a whistleblower told a congressional hearing on interference in the 2016 US election Wednesday. Christopher Wylie, who leaked information on the British-based firm's hijacking of data on millions of Facebook users, told a Senate panel he believes Russian intelligence services had access to data harvested by the consultancy. Wylie told the panel that Russian-American researcher Aleksandr Kogan, who created an application to harvest Facebook user profile data, was working at the same time on Russian-funded projects, including "behavioral research." "This means that in...

<p>Cambridge Analytica, the Trump-affiliated data firm at the center of Facebook's worst privacy scandal in history, is declaring bankruptcy and shutting down.</p> <p>The London firm blamed "unfairly negative media coverage" and said it has been "vilified" for actions it says are both legal and widely accepted as part of online advertising.</p>

For more than a year we’ve been investigating Cambridge Analytica and its links to the Brexit Leave campaign in the UK and Team Trump in the US presidential election. Now, 28-year-old Christopher Wylie goes on the record to discuss his role in hijacking the profiles of millions of Facebook users in order to target the US electorate The first time I met Christopher Wylie, he didn’t yet have pink hair. That comes later. As does his mission to rewind time. To put the genie back in the bottle. By the time I met him in person, I’d already been talking...

Minister for employment Troels Lund Poulsen has backed suggestions that an ethics council for the use of data could be established by the Danish state. The idea has been raised by environmentalist party Alternative, which has proposed that areas such as privacy, data protection, artificial intelligence and data laws could come under the remit of the ethics council. A similar ethics body, the Danish Council of Ethics (Det Etiske Råd), already exists for healthcare matters. “I am open to discussion [of the idea],” Poulsen said to Ritzau. The government has already established a group tasked with finding potential solutions to...

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Tuesday confirmed that Facebook is working with the special counsel investigating Russian meddling in the 2016 election and potential collusion with the Trump campaign. The revelation came during Zuckerberg’s appearance in front of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee and Senate Judiciary Committee joint hearing on Facebook. Asked by Sen. Pat Leahy (D-VT) whether the special counsel team had subpoenaed Facebook, he responded, “I actually am not aware of — of a subpoena. I believe that there may be, but I know we’re working with them.” During the more than five-hour hearing, Democrats sought...

Eighteen years after the collapse of the dot com bubble, US tech companies find themselves in another precarious situation. During the current economic expansion, stocks like Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix and Google (FAANG) have led the soaring Nasdaq stock index. However, valuations have become stretched, and the party may be coming to a dramatic end very soon. The wind has already been taken out of the sails of Facebook. A few weeks ago, #DeleteFacebook went viral after it was revealed that Cambridge Analytica gained access to the information of millions of Facebook users to learn about their identities and influence...