European Union privacy chiefs said Facebook Inc. must stop processing user data from its WhatsApp messaging service while they are investigating the privacy policy changes the company announced in August.

The Article 29 Working Party, made up of privacy chiefs from across the 28-nation EU, told Facebook it had “serious concerns” about the sharing of WhatsApp users’ data for purposes that were not included in the terms of service and privacy policy when existing users signed up to the service. European privacy watchdogs don’t shy away from targeting big US technology firms, as previous probes into Facebook, Alphabet Inc.’s Google or Microsoft Corp. have shown.

Say you’re scrolling through your Facebook Newsfeed and you encounter an ad so eerily well-suited, it seems someone has possibly read your brain. Maybe your mother’s birthday is coming up, and Facebook’s showing ads for her local florist.

Or maybe you just made a joke aloud about wanting a Jeep, and Instagram’s promoting Chrysler dealerships. Whatever the subject, you’ve seen ads like this. You’ve wondered how they found their way to you. Facebook, in its omniscience, knows that you’re wondering — and it would like to reassure you. The social network just revamped its ad preference settings to make them significantly easier for users to understand. 

Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, VK, Google's Picasa and Youtube were handing over user data access to a Chicago-based Startup which then sold this data to law enforcement agencies for surveillance purposes.

Government records obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union revealed that the big technology corporations gave "special access" to Geofeedia. Geofeedia is a controversial social media monitoring tool that pulls social media feeds via APIs and other means of access and then makes it searchable and accessible to its clients, who can search by location or keyword to quickly find recently posted and publicly available contents.

The German data protection agency has ordered Facebook to stop collecting user data from its WhatsApp messenger app and delete any data it has already received.

The social network announced in August that it would begin sharing data from its 1 billion-plus user base, including phone numbers, from WhatsApp users with Facebook for the purpose of targeted ads. It gave users the option of opting out of the data being used for advertising purposes, but did not allow them to opt out of the data sharing between WhatsApp and Facebook.

The Facebook-owned WhatsApp will give its users’ personal information to its parent company and plans to make it easier for businesses to contact subscribers. WhatsApp claims the changes won’t endanger privacy.

WhatsApp published a statement as part of a revision of its terms and privacy policy. “By coordinating more with Facebook, we'll be able to do things like track basic metrics about how often people use our services and better fight spam on WhatsApp. And by connecting your phone number with Facebook's systems, Facebook can offer better friend suggestions and show you more relevant ads if you have an account with them,” said the California-based company.

Last week Facebook posted a video of its solar-powered Aquila drone’s inaugural flight. The aircraft’s design is of flying wing type, with a wingspan close to that of Boeing 737, covered with solar panels.

Besides solar panels, the drone is equipped with batteries which serve as a source of energy during nighttime. Pillars hold four electric engines which rotate propellers. There is also an on-board computer that navigates the aircraft through the predefined trajectory and is also responsible for communication with the ground. To contribute to the drone’s lightweight construction, it lacks wheels and take off using a special wheeled platform pushed by a vehicle.

The man who runs the biggest social network and continuously implements new security measures to boost its billion users security, himself failed to follow basics of Internet security for his own online accounts. Yes, I’m talking about Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who had his Twitter and Pinterest accounts compromised.

The hacker claimed responsibility for the hack and guess how the group did it? Thanks to the LinkedIn data breach! The hackers tweeted that they found Zuck's account credentials in the recent LinkedIn data breach, from which they took his SHA1-hashed password string and then broke it and tried on several social media accounts.

Three months ago, Harvard student Aran Khanna was preparing to start a coveted internship at Facebook when he launched a browser application from his dorm room that angered the social media behemoth.

His application was a Chrome extension that used data from Facebook Messenger to map where users were when they sent messages. The app also showed the locations, which were accurate to within three feet, in a group chat with people he barely knew. That meant complete strangers could hypothetically see that he had messaged them from a Starbucks around the corner, while he could see that they had messaged from their dorms.

ESET researchers have discovered a new, ingenious, yet very simple Facebook phishing scheme: playable Android games that, before they are started, ask users to enter their Facebook credentials.

The researchers found two such games on Google Play. Unlike some other Android malware, these apps did contain legitimate functionality they actually were real games in addition to the fraud. Both apps were developed by the same individual, and have been available for download on Google Play for months. But obviously not all those who downloaded the apps and tried to play the games have fallen for the phishing scheme.

Facebook's Internet.org project, which offers people from developing countries free mobile access to selected websites, has been pitched as a philanthropic initiative to connect two thirds of the world who don’t yet have Internet access.

The global digital divide should be closed and we agree that some Internet access is better than none. However, we question whether this is the right way to do it. There's a real risk that the few websites that Facebook and its partners select for Internet.org could end up becoming a ghetto for poor users instead of a stepping stone to the larger Internet.