Meta suspends employee tracking for AI training after possible data leak

Meta Platforms has temporarily suspended the recording of its employees' mouse and keyboard actions. The data collected was to be used for training AI models but was apparently not sufficiently protected. According to various reports, sensitive employee data was allegedly accessible to other employees. The group denies a possible data leak but is investigating the allegations and has paused employee tracking meanwhile.

Meta has only been recording employees' mouse movements and keystrokes for AI training for two months Meta has been recording employees' mouse movements and keystrokes for AI training . This is intended to help AI models learn human behavior. This met with internal resistance. After weeks of protests, Meta has restricted employee tracking for AI training . At the beginning of June, the tracking software installed on employee PCs was adapted for more data protection. In addition, employees could pause data collection on their computers for 30 minutes.

According to the company, only a few engineers have access to the raw data due to strict access controls. The report by Reuters paints a different picture. According to internal documentation, “full prompts and transcriptions, private conversations, people & performance data” were accessible to other individuals. Subsequently, an employee reported this as a high-priority security incident, which initiated the internal investigation at the data company.

Meta Platforms has not yet said how long the tracking software, called the “Model Capability Initiative” (MCI), will be suspended, but confirmed the investigation. “We have carefully designed this program with privacy safeguards,” explained Meta spokesperson Tracy Clayton. “While we have no indication at this time that any data was improperly accessed by Meta employees, we are pausing it while we investigate.”

In May, there were already accusations that Meta was collecting more information than initially disclosed and storing the logged data unencrypted, which led to data protection concerns among employees. In internal company discussions the security incident, employees called for a thorough investigation of the problems.

“I have accessed both personal tax and medical information through my work computer, as have many thousands of employees,” writes one employee. “We were told this data would be protected and only used for valid business purposes after aggressive filtering.”

This article was originally published in German . It was translated with technical assistance and editorially reviewed before publication.