Meta Investigates Security Issues Related to Internal Mouse Tracking Technology Used to Track Employees and Train AI

Meta has suspended its internal Model Capability Initiative (MCI) after an employee reported exposure of sensitive data from mouse movements and activity tracking.
The program allegedly collected prompts, private conversations, performance data and even tax/medical information in unencrypted form
Meta says no inappropriate access has been confirmed but is investigating; some employees still see the program running during the break

Meta suspends an employee tracking program after one employee reported 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. Called the Model Capability Initiative (MCI), this program reportedly started in April with the aim of training Meta’s AI models through recordings of employee behavior.

According to a memo released at the launch, the goal of the program was to improve the company’s AI models in areas where they struggled to replicate the way humans interacted with computers, such as choosing from a drop-down menu or using different keyboard shortcuts.

Personal tax and medical information exposed?

“This is where all Meta employees can help our models improve simply by doing their daily work,” the memo said at the time.

PK Press Club reported that an employee filed a high-priority security incident report (SEV) regarding 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 stated that the program collected “more information than initially described” and stored it in unencrypted form.

“I accessed personal tax and medical information through my work computer, as did several thousand employees,” the employee reportedly said. “We were told this data would be protected and used only for valid commercial purposes after aggressive filtering. »

Now, Meta has confirmed that it has suspended the program to investigate these allegations.

“We carefully designed this program with privacy safeguards in mind, and while we have no indication at this time that Meta employees inappropriately accessed data, we are suspending it while we investigate,” company spokeswoman Tracy Clayton said. The company did not say how long the program would be suspended, but noted that it would take time to turn it off for everyone, so some employees might still see it running.

As of Monday afternoon, the program was still running for some people, PK Press Club confirmed.

Via PK Press Club