In the same vein, most of the other web giants that have immense data about us guard that data as the lifeblood of their enterprises. In this regard Facebook stands alone among its peers in that it both promised its users privacy and made a business of maximizing access to their data. Other web companies may know us better, but only Facebook makes its observations available to the world. In its latest data leak, Facebook acknowledged this week that two Russian companies had mass harvested user profiles and images from its platform. Of course, Facebook itself has made an art of mass facial recognition and even applied for patents covering the notion of commercializing their facial data and algorithms to offer mass facial recognition for businesses and eventual potentially law enforcement (though the company emphasized it had no immediate plans to do so).

Source: Forbes October 13, 2018 18:00 UTC