Technology - Google News

Facebook Exec Addresses Cambridge Analytica Breach and Offers Tips to Marketers on Using Its Platform
Here's How to Share as Little Data as Possible Without Deleting Facebook
Laser Shortage Means Android Fans Won't Get Face ID-Like Features Any Time Soon

Facebook Exec Addresses Cambridge Analytica Breach and Offers Tips to Marketers on Using Its Platform

Posted: 20 Mar 2018 06:10 AM PDT

2 hours ago

Despite the news about how one firm, Cambridge Analytica, improperly used Facebook to collect user data on about 50 million Facebook users, top executives have mostly remained silent on the topic. That was until Carolyn Everson, vp, global marketing solutions at Facebook took the stage Monday night at the retail conference Shoptalk.

Everson addressed the allegations and stressed how important the privacy of its users is and that this "will be a full-scale investigation" into what Cambridge Analytica did.

"If the allegations are true, this is an incredible violation of everything that we stand for," Everson said.

The statement from Everson is one of the few public words the company has shared, amid other news that chief information security officer, Alex Stamos, may leave Facebook after clashing with how the company's handled its many controversies, including Russian interference during the 2016 election. Stamos went to Twitter on Monday night to say that he's still at Facebook. He did not say whether he was stepping down in August, per reporting by The New York Times.

After speaking about the large elephant in the room, Everson continued on with how Facebook envisions the mobile storefront and what marketers need to learn and apply to their business moving forward.

One lesson traditional companies can learn from retail's digital disruptors is putting their consumer front and center.

"The person is a consumer and that same person shops in a variety of formats," Everson said.

Traditional retail companies could also stand to "test, learn, iterate and scale" more, as digital native brands do. The digitally native disruptors however, are learning on how to build brands that have a great story that consumers will love.

Everson also emphasized the importance of mobile and how much it directs consumer behavior or changes how marketers think about the customer funnel.

"It's fundamentally the single biggest transformation that's happened to consumer behavior in our lifetime," Everson said.

As for metrics, both Everson and Simon Whitcombe, Facebook's vp of global marketing solutions, believe marketers should stop using last click attribution as a key metric and start to think about all the different touch points a consumer passes through that lead to an action.

"Last click basis made a lot of sense 5 to 10 years ago before the advent of the smartphone because the last touch before someone purchased was generally on a desktop computer," Whitcombe said. "I think moving away from last click attribution to a framework that really values the other touch points along the path is an obstacle where I think the companies that move the quickest to a different forms of attribution have a real opportunity to take share away from others."

In addition to the panel, Facebook announced three new ad products at Shoptalk, with one, store sales optimization, focusing on the offline aspects of shopping. The other two products include Canvas, a personalized catalog experience and categories for Facebook dynamic ads, in which brands can serve ads to consumers who were looking across a specific set of category but not products.

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Here's How to Share as Little Data as Possible Without Deleting Facebook

Posted: 20 Mar 2018 06:16 AM PDT

As you may have realized by now, Facebook can't be trusted with your data, and has been caught out time and time again letting it leak out to places it shouldn't. If you can't quite bring yourself to close down your account—maybe there's a support group or family connections you'd like to keep active—then here's how to restrict the amount of data Facebook has got on you.

Keep your profile sparse

Putting your place of work and education history on your profile is great for connecting with old school friends and networking with other users, but do you really want Facebook to know where you've been studying and working? Or which brand of cola you prefer?

Your profile reveals a ton of information about you, but it doesn't have to. Open up your profile page on the web, then click Edit Profile. Click the pen icon to the right of anything you don't want to be there, then Options, then Delete. Further down the page you can remove check-ins, interests, and anything you've ever liked—just click Liked and select Unlike instead.

Deleting data like this from your Facebook profile doesn't necessarily mean Facebook will forget it ever existed—in fact it may well keep your data internally until you actually delete your account in full. However, clearing up your profile will stop apps you connect in the future from accessing it. You should also vow to ignore Facebook's prompts to add more details to your profile from this point on.

Keep your activity to a minimum

Just about everything you do on Facebook adds to the profile the company has on you: Liking, commenting, putting "maybe" on an event invitation, clicking on links, and so on. If you want to stop Facebook learning more about you, you need to cut down on your activity on the site as much as possible. To see activity that's already been logged, go to your profile page and click View Activity Log (you can delete actions from here too).

Uninstall Facebook from your phones and tablets, if it's installed, as these can reveal your location and your mobile habits to Facebook, and stick to using Facebook on the web when you absolutely have to log on. If you go to your notifications page and enable email alerts, you can get news on Facebook activity sent to your inbox, saving you having to visit the site to check every like and comment you get.

Get out of the groups you don't need, unfriend the people you don't absolutely have to be connected to, and of course don't post anything yourself. If you go to your Timeline and Tagging settings on the web, you can stop other people from posting on your timeline and review any tags your friends add before they're published—obviously you should block all of them if you're trying to keep a low profile.

Keep third-party apps disconnected

The now infamous Cambridge Analytica data harvesting happened through a third-party Facebook app—in this case a personality test—and we've warned you many times to keep these kind of connections down to a minimum. The more apps and sites you connect to your Facebook account, the more exposed you are.

Go to the Apps page in your Facebook settings on the web, and click the Remove button (the small x) next to everything you see on this page, unless you really, really can't live without a certain app and trust it to use your data responsibly. Read through the confirmation message on screen, then click the Remove button again to confirm.

This doesn't necessarily delete data those apps have already collected on you, but it's a start. You should also click Edit under Apps others use and untick all the boxes you see—if you have friends who love personality tests and third-party apps, this stops those apps from looking at your data too.

Keep on top of your privacy settings

Facebook likes to track you outside Facebook too, something which you can limit by opening up the Ads page of your Facebook settings on the web and turning the top option under Ad settings ("Ads based on my use of websites and apps") to Off. You can also visit your ad preferences page and remove anything you find under the your interests heading.

To further limit the information Facebook can gather on you when you're not actually on Facebook, head to the YourAdChoices page run by the Digital Advertising Alliance. Find the Facebook entry—and all the others you want to limit the activity of—and tick the Opt Out box (note that you need to do this for every browser you're logged into Facebook on). If that's not enough, we've previously covered a ton of more general ways you can limit how companies track your web browsing.

A lot of the other privacy settings you'll find on your Facebook account limit who else can see your data, but doesn't actually affect the data Facebook collects on you. The best option, if you're not going to delete your account, is simply to clean up your tracks as much as you can, then use the service as little as possible in the future.

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Laser Shortage Means Android Fans Won't Get Face ID-Like Features Any Time Soon

Posted: 20 Mar 2018 07:11 AM PDT

While Android phone makers have gotten a lot of hate for copying the notch on the iPhone X, not one of them has been able to recreate the tech stashed inside that notch: Face ID. And if a report from Reuters is true, that might not change until sometime in 2019.

The problem for Android phone makers is that there's a massive shortage of components required to create the kind of 3D sensing cameras found in the iPhone X. Reuters talked to three of the largest suppliers of 3D sensing tech including Viavi Solutions, Ams AG and Finisar Corp, which is one of Apple's main Face ID parts makers, and all three companies agreed that severe bottlenecks on key parts means "mass adoption of 3D sensing will not happen until next year."

According to Reuters, the most difficult to obtain part are VCSELs, or vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers, which is the core component of Face ID responsible for projecting thousands of tiny little lasers onto people's faces.

When asked about the outlook for other phones with having Face ID-like tech, Viavi's senior director of investor relations Bill Ong told Reuters "We may have a potential introduction of a second handset maker into 3D sensing at the end of this calendar year. (But) the volumes would be very low. In 2019 you clearly will see at least two or more Android-based phones."

Currently, Apple primarily uses Face ID for biometric authentication and those lovable Animoji, however, Gartner analyst John Erensen was quick to point out that 3D sensors will also play an important role in the advancement of AR tech as whole.

Gartner predicts that by 2021, 40 percent of smartphones will have some sort of 3D camera, which could be used for both security and for use in various augmented reality apps.

In the past, some Android handsets like those on Google's Tango AR platform, such as the Lenovo Phab 2 Pro and the ZenFone AR, featured their own rear 3D cameras. However, since Google shut down Tango late last year, it's largely going to be on the shoulders of individual Android phone makers to add 3D sensing capabilities to phones in the future. But first they're going to have to find some lasers.

[Reuters]

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