Intimate details of millions of Facebook users leaked

  • 15/05/2018
A Facebook logo.
A Facebook logo. Photo credit: Getty

The data of millions of Facebook users has been leaked after they used a popular personality quiz app.

Researchers at the University of Cambridge shared the data from app myPersonality with hundreds of researchers via an insecure website, New Scientist reports.

The data centred around private parts of the users' personality and was so poorly guarded finding the user connected to the data would not have been difficult.

Facebook officially suspended the app on April 7.

According to a Facebook spokesperson it was suspended due to a possible policy violation in the language used on the app and its website to describe how data is shared.

The social media giant began investigating apps like myPersonality after it was revealed Cambridge Analytica used a similar app to collect data for political gain.

Psychologist Alexandr Kogan, the man at the centre of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, was involved in the project, but primarily the data was managed by researchers Davit Sitwell and Michael Kosinski.

More than six million people used the app and shared information from their Facebook profiles on the project.  All this data was then anonymised and shared with other researchers, New Scientist reported.

People had to register as a collaborator to get access to the project's data, and more than 280 people were able to do this.

The Information Commissioner also confirmed it was making enquiries about the app.

Newshub.