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PJW: Facebook is Violating General Data Protection Laws by Withholding Reasons for Ban

What is Facebook trying to hide?

Published

2 years ago

on

Journalist Paul Joseph Watson is accusing Facebook of violating European law by refusing to hand over information about why he was thrown off the monolithic social media platform earlier this year.

Watson believes that Facebook is violating the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), implemented by the European Union in May 2018, with their unwillingness to comply with his request.

Despite Watson’s accusation, Facebook claims on its website that they are in full compliance with the GDPR.

“Data protection is central to the Facebook Companies (Facebook and Messenger, Instagram, Oculus and WhatsApp). We comply with current EU data protection law, which includes the GDPR. Our GDPR preparations were led by our Dublin-based data protection team and supported by the largest cross-functional team in Facebook’s history,” they wrote.

Despite their lip service, Facebook has already been implicated for possible violations of the GDPR throughout Europe. They are facing a potential fine of over $1 billion over their alleged abusive practices in violation of the law.

ZDNet reports:

Facebook could face potentially billions in fines under GDPR for the latest data breach which impacted roughly 50 million accounts.

The security incident, revealed last week, was caused by a vulnerability in Facebook’s code which permitted attackers to steal access tokens.

Access tokens are used to keep Facebook users logged in when they switch over to a public profile view via the “View As” feature.

The breach was detected on September 25. The vulnerability, comprising of three separate bugs, has been resolved and the access tokens of affected users have been reset, alongside an additional 40 million users that were subject to a “View As” lookup over the past 12 months.

It took mere hours before class-action lawsuits were filed against Facebook for failing to protect user data. It seems that it took only a little longer for regulators to become involved.

According to the Data Protection Commission (DPC) for Ireland, the number of affected accounts involved in the latest security incident relating to EU citizens is less than 10 percent of the total 50 million users impacted.

This works out to roughly five million users, which is still a huge number of people who may have had their data accessed or stolen.

If Watson’s interpretation of the GDPR is correct, Facebook may be in more trouble as the social media platform loses prestige and market share for its myriad of privacy violations and censorship policies.

Tech

Gab Attacked in Coordinated Hacking Attempt, Timed to Coincide with CPAC

This hack coincided with Trump’s CPAC speech.

Published

2 days ago

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Feb 28, 2021

By

Free speech social media platform Gab was attacked in a coordinated hacking operation sometime this weekend, with malicious actors briefly compromising accounts of prominent users of the platform.

Gab founder Andrew Torba disclosed the cyberattack, revealing that left-wing operatives had sought to compromise both his own Gab account and an archive account reserved for President Donald Trump. The attack compromised Trump’s reserved account minutes before the President was slated to speak on-stage at CPAC- with the timing suggesting the President may announce he’s joining the free speech social media service.

It’s unclear which other accounts were targeted. Torba confirmed that Gab was cooperating with law enforcement in response to the breach. Alt-tech competitor Parler also suffered from frequent data breaches and insecurity, and it may be that powerful institutions determined to take down Parler have shifted their focus to terroristic tactics targeting Gab.

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Gab has been targeted on previous occasions by entities that oppose its mission to restore free speech on the internet. Torba’s disclosure of the incident differs greatly from the deceptive business tactics of Facebook and Twitter, which regularly decline to reveal data breaches and sell user information to corporations and governments at a whim and without any user consent.

Big League Politics is monitoring the situation for any further developments.

Follow me on Gab @WildmanAZ, Twitter @Wildman_AZ, and on Parler @Moorhead.

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