- Meta halted its internal Model Capability Initiative (MCI) after an employee flagged the exposure of sensitive mouse movement and activity tracking data.
- The program allegedly collected directions, private conversations, performance data, and even tax/medical information in unencrypted form.
- Meta says no improper access has been confirmed but is investigating; some employees still see the program running during the break
Meta is pausing an employee tracking program after one of its employees flagged it for exposing sensitive data.
The company behind Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp was apparently running an internal program that tracked employees’ mouse movements and digital activity. This program, called the Model Capability Initiative (MCI), reportedly began in April with the goal of training Meta’s AI models through recordings of employee behavior.
According to a memo published at the launch, the purpose of the program was to improve the company’s artificial intelligence models in areas where they had difficulty replicating how humans interacted with computers, such as choosing from a drop-down menu or using different keyboard shortcuts.
Personal medical and tax information exposed?
“This is where all Meta employees can help our models improve simply by doing their daily jobs,” the memo said at the time.
PakGazette reported that an employee filed a high-priority security incident report (SEV) about the program’s exposure of employee data, including “full prompts and transcripts, private conversations, people and performance data, DSS sensitivity ratings (1-4).” The same publication also said that the program was collecting “more information than initially described” and storing it unencrypted.
“I have accessed personal medical and tax information through my work computer, as have many thousands of employees,” the employee allegedly said. “We were told that this data would be protected and only used for valid business purposes after aggressive filtering.”
Now, Meta confirmed having paused the program to investigate these claims.
“We have carefully designed this program with privacy safeguards, and while we have no indication at this time that any data has been improperly accessed by Meta employees, we are pausing it while we investigate,” company spokesperson Tracy Clayton was quoted as saying. The company did not say how long the program will be paused, but stressed that it would take time to stop it for everyone, so some employees may still see it running.
As of Monday afternoon, the program was still working for some people, PakGazette confirmed.
Through PakGazette
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