Facebook being 'evasive' over Cambridge Analytica: UK lawmakers

Facebook's response to questions about Cambridge Analytica's misuse of its data continues to "display a pattern of evasive behaviour", according to the chair of a British parliamentary committee.

"Facebook continues to display a pattern of evasive behaviour -- a pattern which has emerged over the course of our inquiry. "In some cases, these answers even show inconsistencies in their evidence to us," Damian Collins, chair of a British parliamentary committee was quoted as saying by CNET late Friday.

Collins has outlined a number of areas where Facebook's answers have been lacking, including refusing accountability for fraudulent ads on the site, not sharing country-by-country revenues, digital political advertising and refusal to share how many resources are being devoted to security.

"Collins says the committee will continue to push Facebook 'until the public get the answers they deserve'.

"The MP has been fighting to have Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg face his committee and is looking into issuing a formal summons that would legally compel him to do so," the report added.

This comes a day after a security researcher revealed that a german personality quiz app was exposing the private data of about 120 million Facebook users it had amassed to third-parties online since 2016.

The company behind "NameTests", a German app maker Social Sweethearts, created popular social quizzes like "Which Disney Princess Are You?" and distributed them on the social networking site.

Facebook was hit by a major data scandal in March after Cambridge Analytica, a British consulting company, was accused of harvesting data of up to 87 million Facebook users without permission to help politicians, including US President Donald Trump and the Brexit campaign.

Appearing before the US Congress, the company CEO Mark Zuckerberg told the lawmakers that his own personal data was part of the users' data that was "improperly shared" with the British political consultancy firm.

--IANS

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