Many Questions Still Unanswered in Facebook's Latest Data Leak
*By Madison Alworth*
After an unfortunate spate of privacy scandals, Facebook is on a mission to revamp its image. In the wake of yet another breach ー in which hackers gained access to the private information of 30 million users ー the company is shifting its efforts (and its public relations machine) to face the midterms.
"If those look like they went okay, at least in the U.S., then potentially Facebook could recover," Deepa Seetharaman, a tech reporter at the Wall Street Journal, said Thursday in an interview on Cheddar. "But this is a company where it’s been one issue after the other."
The latest incident, which was discovered in late September, precipitated a media hailstorm and caused a group of shareholders to again call for Mark Zuckerberg's removal as chairman of his company's board.
In many ways, Seetharaman noted, Facebook ($FB) is still making amends for its missteps in 2016, when Russian hackers reportedly launched a misinformation campaign on the platform to sway U.S. election results.
To avoid a repeat, the company has set up a "war room" in its California headquarters and hired thousands of moderators to police the platform.
Although Facebook said it strongly suspects that the latest attack was executed for commercial, not political purposes, many unknowns persist ー namely where all the data went.
"It's also unclear what happens after that data was initially mined by these attackers. We don't know where that information went. It's just unclear how that data was used and who else might have their hands on it," Seetharaman said.
"Facebook didn't say anything publicly, so we’re getting this all from sources connected to the company. They’re still working with the FBI to figure out, with as close to complete certainty as possible, who might be behind this. But for now the conclusions are it;s this group of scammers that the company has known about for a while."
For full interview [click here](https://cheddar.com/videos/who-was-behind-the-30-million-user-facebook-hack).
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