Facebook Was Down For 8 Hours While Criminal Investigation Over Users’ Data Deals With Apple, Amazon and Microsoft Is Conducting
Facebook is reportedly under criminal investigation over deals that gave Apple, Amazon, and other companies access to user data. Meanwhile, on Wednesday, Facebook went down for nearly 8 hours; Instagram and WhatsApp have also been experiencing problems.
Nexter.org reports what’s going on.
The biggest Facebook outage in history
Facebook is in the midst of its biggest outage in recent memory. Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp have been down for users around the world for almost eight hours. For context, Facebook went down last August for about 45 minutes, which was a relatively lengthy disruption at the time.
The company hasn’t commented on exactly how many of its users were affected, but reports from downdetector.com, a website that tracks online service disruptions, indicates the issue is widespread, affecting users in North America, South America, and Europe.
Besides Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, the company’s advertising tools have also been impacted, according to its director of product, Rob Leathern. Users are also reporting issues with their Oculus accounts.
Facebook said on Twitter that it was “working to resolve the issue,” and confirmed that the problems are not the result of a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack, as some have speculated.
Facebook is under criminal investigation over data-sharing deals with Apple and Amazon
Source: Tom Brenner/The New York Times
Federal prosecutors have opened a criminal investigation into data-sharing deals struck between Facebook and makers of mobile computing devices like smartphones and tablets, reports the New York Times.
Under the terms of those deals, which the Times reported about in June, Facebook allowed device makers including Apple, Amazon, and Microsoft to access personal user data, including friend lists, contact information, and sometimes even private messages — and not always with the user’s consent, the report alleged.
Most of those partnerships have ended over the last two years.
According to the New York Times report, a grand jury in New York has already subpoenaed information on these types of deals from at least two smartphone and other device manufacturers involved.
Facebook has been struggling to rehabilitate its public image amid revelations that it allowed Cambridge Analytica to improperly access the personal data of many of its users and the growing evidence of how its social network has been used to spread misinformation during the 2016 US Presidential elections.
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