US software giant Mozilla and Germany's Commerzbank have both said they will pull advertising from Facebook over the Cambridge Analytica affair. The social network has been under fire all week over revelations that the political consultancy harvested private data from the Facebook profiles of 50m Americans and handed it on to the Donald Trump campaign for use in the micro-targeting of swing voters during the 2016 US presidential election. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has since apologised and volunteered to testify before Congress, conceding: "We made mistakes". Chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg said the site would be "open to regulation" as it seeks to rebuild public trust over the handling of users' information and accusations that Russian bots were engaged in the spread of "fake news" and misinformation across its pages in a bid to sway the race for the White House. Writing in a blog post, Mozilla CEO Denelle Dixon said the company was "pressing pause" on its Facebook advertising.

If most people were asked how much their privacy is worth, they'd likely say it's priceless. User logins for many of the most popular apps sell for next to nothing on the dark web, a shadowy corner of the internet that's frequented by criminals, drug users, arms dealers and is often the grounds for all kinds of illicit activities. Now, a recent report from content marketing agency Fractl has found out just how much your data is worth on the dark web. A report from content marketing agency Fractl has found out how much your data is worth on the dark web, including your Facebook login, which can be purchased for just $5.20 The price of user privacy has been cast into the spotlight in the wake of Facebook's massive data scandal, which led to 50 million users' data being harvested without their knowledge. Facebook has since announced that it would notify all users whose data was misused by British research firm Cambridge Analytica or any app developers who are found to have mismanaged users' personal information.

For a spell during 2010 and 2011, I was a virtual rancher of clickable cattle on Facebook. It feels like a long time ago. Obama was serving his first term as president. Google hadn't arrived, let alone vanished again. Steve Jobs was still alive, as was Kim Jong Il.

When my parents first joined Facebook to stalk me, I thought the social network was going to become uncool and fade away like Myspace, Friendster, and the other social networks that came and went before it. Since then, we've found out that Russian spies have used it to influence American elections, that a shady British marketing firm harvested the personal data of 50 million Americans to target voters with political ads, that Facebook researchers devised an experiment to see if they could make us depressed, and the UN has claimed it played a role in genocide. In fact, my colleague Daniel Oberhaus quit, and wrote a guide on how do it if you want to do the same. But we also understand if that many people want or have to stay on Facebook to do their job or stay in touch with their family. And, after all, quitting Facebook is the ultimate first world privilege.

After revelations that political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica allegedly appropriated Facebook user data to advise Donald Trump's 2016 U.S. presidential campaign, many are calling for greater regulation of social media networks, saying a'massive data breach' has occurred. The idea that governments can regulate their way into protecting citizen privacy is appealing, but I believe it misses the mark. What happened with Cambridge Analytica wasn't a breach or a leak. It was a wild violation of academic research ethics. The CEO finally broke his silence on the misuse of 51 million users' data Wednesday evening, outlining three steps the firm plans to take to prevent something like this from happening again.

When Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg posted a status update Wednesday on the still-unfolding Cambridge Analytica scandal, he called it an "issue," a "mistake" and a "breach of trust." But he didn't say it was a data breach. Ever since the news broke this weekend that the U.K. firm Cambridge Analytica obtained information about 50 million Facebook users without their knowledge, the social media site has been carefully avoiding using those words. Executives are profusely apologizing but stopping short of characterizing the situation as a data breach -- a phrase that brings to mind images of hacker frantically typing in a dark room or stolen credit card numbers being shared online. Facebook has 1.4 billion daily users it doesn't want to scare off with the "data breach" characterization. Here's what happened: A few years ago, a researcher put together a Facebook personality quiz that asked participants to download an app and give him access to their friends' data.

Facebook has been hard to miss this week as it struggles to cope with an unfolding scandal over the way data analysis firm Cambridge Analytica got hold of information about 50 million users. In the wake of the furore, Facebook has promised to take a tougher line with apps and others who want to mine the mountain of data the social network has stockpiled about its two billion active users. For some, however, this latest data gathering debacle is the final straw and the hashtag #DeleteFacebook has been trending on Twitter. The tag was used more than 50,000 times on Tuesday and Wednesday in tweets, reported the New York Times, which suggests it was a popular topic of discussion. But even if every one of those who used the tag, including singer Cher, deleted their account it would not make much difference to the social network's total population.

The scandal that has erupted around Cambridge Analytica's alleged use of 50 million Facebook profiles in the 2016 US election campaign is worrying for legitimate researchers who use social media data. Cambridge Analytica has denied any wrongdoing and said that the business tactics it used are widespread among other firms. But a day after the scandal hit, Facebook's shares plummeted on Wall Street amid a privacy backlash. The worry is the incident could also affect legitimate academic research. Social media data is a rich source of information for many areas of research in psychology, technology, business and humanities.

Newsbeat's De'Graft Mensah took the plunge and let an online security expert comb through his easily-downloadable Facebook data.

Newsbeat's De'Graft Mensah took the plunge and let an online security expert comb through his easily-downloadable Facebook data.