July 16th 2023.
An investigation by The Observer has revealed that the Met Police, alongside Norfolk and Suffolk constabularies, have been sharing sensitive crime information with Facebook. This includes details such as the type of offense being reported, as well as a user's Facebook profile code, sent via a tracking tool called a Meta Pixel.
This data was shared despite the online form for victims and witnesses to report offences being advertised as ‘secure’. Furthermore, the embedded tracking tool would also send details to Facebook about content viewed and buttons clicked on webpages related to contacting police, accessing victim services, and advice pages for crimes such as rape, assaults, stalking, and fraud.
Dame Vera Baird, the former victims’ commissioner, expressed her concern about this situation: “You think you are dealing with a public authority you can trust and in fact you are dealing with Facebook and the wild world of advertising.”
The Met Police said that they used the Meta Pixel facility for recruitment campaigns, and would be removing them from all other pages. A force spokesman also clarified that “At no point is the personal data inputted by an individual reporting crime ever shared with third parties.”
The spokesman added that the website was using industry standard techniques to understand the user journey and improve their services, but that “the technology used to do this does not under any circumstances disclose the content of information entered nor does it disclose the personal details of the individual using the service.”
Furthermore, a spokesman for Meta, which operates Facebook, said that “We’ve been clear in our policies that advertisers should not send sensitive information about people through our Business Tools. Doing so is against our policies and we educate advertisers on properly setting up Business Tools to prevent this from occurring. Our system is designed to filter out potentially sensitive data it is able to detect.”
This news comes after a previous Observer investigation found that 20 NHS trusts had shared private information of patients with Facebook through the use of Meta Pixels, with 17 of the trusts saying they would stop using them. It is clear that there needs to be better regulation in place to ensure sensitive data is not shared with third-parties without permission.
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