The Privacy Protection Authority announced today (Thursday) to Facebook that it has opened an administrative investigation - following the publications regarding the transfers of personal information from Facebook to Cambridge Analytica, and the possibility of further violations of the law involving the personal information of Israelis.
An official announcement by the Authority, a unit in the Ministry of Justice whose job is to ensure the protection of privacy in personal information and regulate the field of electronic signatures in Israel, stated that according to privacy laws, personal information "will only be used for the purpose for which it was provided and may be transferred to another entity only if consent has been given.".
The authority will investigate whether personal information of Israeli surfers was used illegally, in a way that violates their right to privacy, and violates privacy protection laws in Israel.
Want more news, videos and stories? Join the Haredim 10 WhatsApp channel >>
The investigation will be opened following the public outcry in the US, following the investigation by the New York Times newspaper. According to the investigation, Cambridge Analytica illegally obtained information on 50 million Facebook users.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg responded for the first time last night to the scandal, admitting: "We made mistakes regarding the information we had.".
In a post he published on his personal account, Zuckerberg wrote: "The affair constitutes a breach of trust between Facebook and the users of the social network who share information with it, and expect it to protect it. We need to fix this.".
He added: "We have a responsibility to our users' information and we are working to understand what happened. We made mistakes and we admit it. We only learned over the weekend that Cambridge Analytica did not delete the information as requested in 2015.".
He claimed that steps were taken to ensure that this would not happen again.
