Mark Zuckerberg admits mistakes, vows to ‘step up’

San Francisco: Breaking more than four days of silence, Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg vowed Wednesday to "step up" to fix problems at the social media giant, as it fights a snowballing scandal over the hijacking of personal data from millions of its users.

"We have a responsibility to protect your data, and if we can't then we don't deserve to serve you," Zuckerberg said, in his first public comments after the controversy surfaced.

The world's largest social media network is facing the heat after Cambridge Analytica, a British consulting company, was accused of harvesting data of up to 50 million Facebook users without permission and using the data to help politicians, including US President Donald Trump and the Brexit campaign.

The scandal erupted when a whistleblower revealed that British data consultant Cambridge Analytica (CA) had created psychological profiles on 50 million Facebook users via a personality prediction app, created by a researcher named Aleksandr Kogan. The app was downloaded by 270,000 people, but also scooped up their friends' data without consent -- as was possible under Facebook's rules at the time.

Writing on his Facebook Zuckerberg announced new steps to rein in the leakage of data to outside developers and third-party apps, while giving users more control over their information through a special toolbar. "We know that this was a major violation of people's trust, and I deeply regret that we didn't do enough to deal with it," Facebook chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg said in a post echoing Zuckerberg's comments.

Zuckerberg said measures had been in place since 2014 to prevent the sort of abuse revealed over the weekend. "But we also made mistakes, there's more to do, and we need to step up and do it," he said.

Facebook says it discovered last week that CA may not have deleted the data as as it certified.

"This was a breach of trust between Kogan, Cambridge Analytica and Facebook," Zuckerberg wrote. "But it was also a breach of trust between Facebook and the people who share their data with us and expect us to protect it." "We need to fix that."

The company said that it will prevent further misuse by enacting restrictions on the use of personal data. In a post on Wednesday, Facebook said that it was enacting six main initiatives to prevent companies from having access to people's personal data without their authorization.

The initiatives include:

— Reviewing all apps that have had access to large amounts of data on its platform and apps with suspicious activity,

— Alerting people who have had their information misused through apps,

— Turning off an app's access to users' data if the person hasn't used the app in the last three months,

— Changing Facebook Login data so apps can only see a user's name, profile photo and email address unless the app goes through a further review process,

— Helping people manage the apps they use on Facebook and what information the apps can see about them, and,

— Increasing bug, bounty program for people to report and get rewarded if they find instances of app developers incorrectly using people's data.