- Meta paused its employee tracking software after a data access breach was reported internally
- The software monitored keystrokes, clicks, and mouse movements to aid AI training efforts
- An internal breach exposed data from 45,000 tables, including private conversations and performance data
Meta had put its employee tracking software programme on hold, after the firm had sensitive information collected from it available for access to anyone within the firm, as per internal security notice and employee testimonies cited by a Wired report on Monday.
The firm had installed tracking software on their employees' work computers in the US to monitor keystrokes, clicks, and mouse movements. The programme was meant to collect data from Meta's personnel in order to train the firm's artificial intelligence systems.
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The company is currently investigating the potential internal data breach to determine whether it was accessed by others on Meta's staff, putting the information collection programme on indefinite hold.
"We have carefully designed this program with privacy safeguards and while we have no indication at this time that any data was improperly accessed by Meta employees, we're pausing it while we investigate," Spokesperson Tracy Clayton told Wired.
The security notice noted that employee data across 45,000 hive tables had been breached. The tables consisted of employee activity like full prompts and transcriptions, private conversations, people and performance data, as per the documents cited in the report.
Sources from the firm stated that the incident has been marked "closed", which indicates that the matter has likely been considered concluded by the IT company. Meta's chief technology officer Andrew Bosworth stated in an internal memo that the tracking programme had misconfigured access control lists and the firm needs to find every data access point and analyse it.
Bosworth had previously stated that the programme would be “tightly controlled" while responding to employees' concerns regarding data privacy. The company's employees had previously held protests against the implementation of this software at various US branches of the tech giant's offices.
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Members of the company's workforce reportedly handed out protest flyers to others at meetings, close to vending machines and inside restrooms, requesting them to sign an online petition against the use of this software.
The firm also laid off 10% of its employees across the globe as part of its restructuring plans around funding and expanding AI development. Meta cut 8,000 jobs and froze 6,000 open roles.
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