By Maria Tsangari
The social network is shaking after the scandal of interception of data of Facebook users and their friends by the company Cambridge Analytica, through an application that did a personality test.
This is no longer possible, according to the new terms of use of Facebook, but what data do the applications have access to?
Dinos Pastos - Internet expert
"As for the companies that produce applications, these so-called applications ask for our personal data in exchange for the use of their services. For example, an application may ask us to retrieve our friends list, first name, last name, email, date of birth and various other information we have provided on Facebook. We give these with our consent, that is, they do not take them in a fraudulent way "
Users need to be careful about which applications they trust and what licenses they give them.
Dinos Pastos - Internet expert
"If we have already given access to some applications, our data already has them. In other words, it is not so easy to automatically remove our data from third companies ".
To delete the applications within Facebook we can do it from the settings of our account, in the special category "Applications".
But even if the applications are deleted, they still retain our data.
Dinos Pastos - Internet expert
"If a service has collected information of ours for a specific purpose and in the future uses it for another purpose, there is a European directive called the GDPR which gives every European citizen the right to request the destruction and deletion of information collected by us. for data protection purposes ”
Many chose to delete their Facebook account completely so as not to run any risk with the hashtag #deletefacebook becoming popular.
Dinos Pastos - Internet expert
"In general, it is recommended to pay attention to what we publish online. Fortunately, citizens of the European Union have the opportunity to request the deletion of data not only from Facebook "
The same goes for all the services on the internet. We can request, as in Google for example, offers a request to delete information made either by us or by third parties.