Facebook paid $7.3 million to protect Mark Zuckerberg last year

Meanwhile, concern about Facebook Inc's respect for data privacy is widening to include the information it collects about non-users, after Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg said the world's largest social network tracks people whether they have accounts or not.

During his testimony, Zuckerberg responded to a question asked by United States representative that his company tracks the data of non-Facebook users for security purposes.

"The data was given to [Cambridge Analytica]", said David Gunkel, media studies professor. We must stop being Facebook's product and become Facebook's consumer. It allows app developers to scrape data in order to utilize it.

When does Facebook get data about people from other websites and apps? Information collected to make such determinations included race, religion and political affiliation, among other things. "Facebook is saying it is improving its user interface by updating its app every week, but many are saying the company is concentrating on profit maximization rather than the convenience of users", one of them commented.

Sen. Dick Durbin asked Zuckerberg Tuesday if he would be comfortable sharing which hotel he stayed in the previous night, or if he would be okay with showing the public the text messages from his phone. Yes, you heard that right.

"This kind of data collection is fundamental to how the internet works", Facebook said in a statement to Reuters.

Since the average length of a Facebook update is 11 words you can see that the results of this "psychological manipulation" test were tiny.

For example, when it comes to facial recognition, Facebook is fighting against users consenting to have their faces recognized in photos.

Facebook has always been a prerequisite for signing up for the service, along with competitors like Tinder, created to help verify identities, offer common friends and expedite registration.

In its blogpost, the company said it believes that "once a story is rated as false, we have been able to reduce its distribution by 80 per cent, and thereby, improve accuracy of information on Facebook and reduce misinformation". "It's a chain reaction".

Cambridge Analytica, an IT service management company which had harvested the Facebook data of 87 million users without their knowledge, has left users of Facebook baffled all across the globe. This is likely going to cause some tension when Europe's GDPR kicks in, as the regulation requires data-portability for all citizens, not just Facebook users.