A popular personality quiz app left more than three million Facebook users’ private information exposed on a vulnerable website for four years, according to an investigation by New Scientist.
Facebook users were encouraged to share personal and intimate details, like the results of a psychological test, with the app myPersonality. Academics working at the University of Cambridge then transferred the information to a website with “insufficient security provisions” where it remained for four years, according to the Monday report. During this time, outside parties could reportedly access this personal data with relative ease.
Those who had access to the data would’ve been able to view 3.1 million users’ app scores that reveal personal characteristics about a particular individual, like their conscientiousness, agreeableness and neuroticism, according to the report.
Additionally, the app had collected data from “22 million status updates from over 150,000 users, alongside details such as age, gender and relationship status from 4.3 million people.”
Under the terms of use, the myPersonality team was allowed to use and distribute the data “in an anonymous manner such that the information cannot be traced back to the individual user,” but they took “poor precautions” to scrub identifying information like users’ names, New Scientist found.
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