New Facebook notification explained – why you’ve got a ‘Protecting Your Information’ pop-up at the top of your News Feed

GOT a weird ‘Protecting Your Information’ pop-up at the top of your Facebook feed? You’re not alone – all two billion Facebook users will have got one.

Here’s a snap of the two different notifications you can get – we’ll reveal what each one means, and why it’s bad news if you got the one on the right:

Facebook ‘Protecting Your Information’ notification explained

If you get the left notification, it means absolutely nothing – it’s just an alert on how to better manage your Facebook privacy settings.

But if you get the right notification, it means your data has been given away without your permission.

Around 87million people (including just over a million Brits) will have received this pop-up.

Why was my data given away?

When you sign up to an app with your Facebook account, you agree to hand over some personal info from your profile.

But in 2007, Facebook changed the rules.

So instead of taking just your information, app creators were also able to take the information of your Facebook friends too.

This means app creators were taking people’s information who (1) had never used their apps and (2) hadn’t given permission for their info to be taken.

Bad idea.

In 2013, a professor called Aleksandr Kogan exploited this system.

He created a personality quiz app that was installed by around 300,000 Facebook users.

But Kogan used Facebook’s dodgy rules to take information from all of those app users’ friends.

That means Kogan racked up data on around 87million people.

In 2014, Facebook killed the rule that let Kogan do this – but the damage was already done.

In 2015, Facebook was made aware that Kogan had sold his data on to Cambridge Analytica.

Cambridge Analytica is a UK-based political propaganda firm that’s believed to have worked on both the Brexit and Trump campaigns.

Facebook asked Cambridge Analytica to delete the data, but didn’t actually check if this happened.

Then in March 2018, it emerged that Cambridge Analytica may not have actually deleted the data.

So now Facebook is using a notification to tell users whether their notification was given away without their permission.

I didn’t get the notification – what went wrong?

The notifications started going out to users at 5pm UK time on Monday, April 9.

However, The Sun understands that it’s a gradual rollout, so you might be waiting a little while.

Facebook hasn’t revealed exactly how gradual the rollout will be however, so it could be hours, days, or even weeks.

If you’d rather expedite the process, you can check manually here:

Facebook is currently being investigated by a number of countries, including the UK and USA, over the scandal.

And Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is testifying in front of US Congress to explain what went wrong.

Were you caught up in the Cambridge Analytica breach? Let us know!

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