Facebook

Facebook has announced that it has awarded $800,000 to ten projects looking to make the internet and people on Facebook more secure. Each of the winners was awarded prize money of between $60,000 and $100,000 on the sidelines of the Black Hat USA security conference in Las Vegas. It will also award a further $200,000 via the Internet Defense Prize at the USENIX Security Symposium on August 15th.

Discussing the selections and the selection process, Alex Stamos, Facebook’s Chief Security Officer, wrote:

L33tdawg: We are proud to have Alex Stamos deliver the keynote for us at #HITB2019AMS - Our 10th year anniversary conference in The Netherlands! 

Facebook Chief Security Officer Alex Stamos is leaving the company later this month, he announced Wednesday.

Facebook approved a $10 million annual pre-tax allowance to amplify security for CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his family.

The allowance, announced in an SEC filing on Thursday, increases Facebook's security spend on Zuckerberg from $7.3 million last year.

L33tdawg: We are proud to have Alex keynoting for us next year at #HITB2019AMS! Our 10th year anniversary HITB Security Conference in Amsterdam!

Alex Stamos, Facebook’s head of security, called for radical overhaul in how Facebook operates in a leaked memo from March 2018, as the company reeled from a chain of ugly scandals.

Facebook acknowledged Tuesday it was facing multiple inquiries from US and British regulators about the major Cambridge Analytica user data scandal.

The leading social network offered no details but its admission confirmed reports of a widening investigation into the misuse of private data by Facebook and its partners.

"We are cooperating with officials in the US, UK and beyond," a Facebook spokesman said in response to an AFP query. "We've provided public testimony, answered questions, and pledged to continue our assistance as their work continues."

Cambridge Analytica, the embattled London-based data analytics firm that famously did work for the Donald Trump presidential campaign, has shut down.

According to The Wall Street Journal, the company's closure is effective today.

Mark Zuckerberg knew his keynote speech at F8 this year would not be like any other. His previous appearances at Facebook's annual developer's conference were all about the new products and technology Facebook was announcing that day, and the vision he would share for future triumphs.

Facebook now says the data firm Cambridge Analytica gained unauthorized access to up to 87 million users' data, mainly in the United States. This figure is far higher than the 50 million users that were previously reported.

Facebook's chief technology officer Mike Schroepfer shared this figure at the end of a lengthy—and somewhat unrelated—blog post Wednesday that laid out a slew of changes Facebook is making to restrict access to user data.

The Federal Trade Commission’s Bureau of Consumer Protection confirmed Monday that has undertaken a non-public investigation into Facebook’s data practices, according to a statement from Tom Pahl, the agency’s acting director. The announcement comes just over a week after The New York Times and the The Guardian published explosive reports about the reported improper use of data belonging to 50 million Facebook users by the Trump-campaign affiliated data firm Cambridge Analytica.

In recent days, more and more Facebook users started seeing a notification about how the social network uses its facial recognition technology. When Facebook first implemented the tech in 2013, it limited its use to suggesting tags in photos. In December, though, the company announced that it would expand face recognition's scope to notify you when someone added a photo you were in, whether it was tagged or not. If that sounds like something you'd rather Facebook not do, it's easy enough to stop.