Facebook may have kept users' never-published videos that they recorded but never posted to the site, assuming the social network would discard of the
unused clips, according to CNET.
Ever since news of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, in which the election consultancy firm got a hold of personal data from about 50 million Facebook accounts, the social network has been under increased scrutiny when it comes to users and their privacy on the platform.
In an effort to find out just how much personal information Facebook has on them, many users have turned to the site’s archive feature, which permits one to download all content ever uploaded to the site.
But some of the findings may be unsettling.
Bailey Kircher is one such user who found that Facebook had stored several different videos recorded via the platform’s camera feature of her attempting to play the flute. She had recorded and discarded several takes before deciding on a final version to upload to a friend's wall, according to New York magazine.
New York magazine writer Madison Malone Kircher detailed the story of Bailey, her sister, and also her co-worker Brittany Stephanis, who discovered dozens of unpublished videos had been stored in her archive dating all the way back to 2008.
This prompted Malone Kircher to investigate her own archive, where she also found that video clips that had been recorded but never posted to Facebook had still been saved.
In a statement to CNET, a Facebook spokesperson said they are looking into the matter.
“We've heard that when accessing their information from our Download Your Information tool, some people are seeing their old videos that do not appear on their profile or Activity Log. We are investigating."
This is just the latest in a series of revelations about Facebook users' privacy. Earlier this week, it was reported that Facebook had collected personal data from some of its users, including call logs and text messages of consenting Android users.
The Guardian also found that users deleting their Facebook profiles were discovering the social network had been harvesting their personal information.
One user, Dylan McKay, noted that his Facebook archive contained “the metadata of every cellular call I’ve ever made, including time and duration” between October 2016 and July 2017, as well as “metadata about every text message I’ve ever received or sent,” according to the report.
The recent backlash against Facebook has forced the site to introduce various changes that make it easier for its users to change their privacy settings as well as download and delete data that has been collected by the social network.
“Most of these updates have been in the works for some time, but the events of the past several days underscore their importance,” Facebook said in a statement Wednesday.
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