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Another scandal of confidentiality. The administrator of a closed group of Facebook Andrea Downing denounced that the Grouply.io Chrome extension allowed to download names, employers, locations, e-mail addresses and other Data from the 9,000 members of his group, reports "Engadget" citing a report "CNBC"
The Downing group focuses on women who have a gene associated with an increased risk of developing breast cancer. It is a medical information that many people want to keep secret and in group conversations, so that the complaint uncovers a disturbing fact.
Security researcher Fred Trotter, consulted by Downing on the legality of Grouply.io's practice, discovered that he could also access group information and others manually. His goal was to find a "legal void" in the privacy policy that allowed the extension to access private information.
After Trotter's analysis, he reported the problem to the social network. As a first answer, he heard Facebook that the names of the group members were "visible" and added that he "was exploring possible changes related to group membership and to confidentiality checks for groups ".
the insistence of the Downing Group and the first "apologies" of Facebook the company finally decided to close the possibility of collecting this type of information from closed groups . According to a spokesperson called "CNBC", this was due to "several factors", not just the specific case of this group.
The social network was responsible for sending a letter of termination to the manufacturer Grouply.io early this year. And now, the advertiser support application has been discontinued.
In addition, the social network clarified to "Engadget" that the list of closed group members was visible to others, something that was notified. But the ability to download detailed information has never been a function in this section of the platform. Now only administrators will have access to the list of members of their groups.
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