It is no secret if you haven’t lived under a rock for the past 6 months that Facebook has been on the naughty list lately. In likely one of it’s biggest crises yet, Facebook is trying to redeem themselves.
But what happened?
Cambridge Analytica, a United Kingdom political consulting firm, hired an American researcher to gather Facebook user information in the United States. Conveniently and arguably associated to the US elections in 2015-2016 because it began in summer of 2014, when campaigns began – this scandal likely contributed to Trump being elected. Cambridge Analytica reportedly wanted the data because it would help the Trump campaign team better target certain demographics with their campaign. They got more than their basic information. They retrieved enough personal information that they could for a basic psychological profile to create really appealing advertisements for Trump.
This data was collected from an app Facebook users downloaded called This Is Your Digital Life where their basic information was collected for a micropayment. While only about 300,000 individuals downloaded the application, if their privacy setting allowed it, the app could crawl all of their friend’s basic information as well. As a result, a final estimation of 87 million people’s basic information was stolen (without permission) from Facebook and their users.
It is argued by the American developer, Aleksandr Kogan, had permission to do so. In 2007, Facebook let developers create and offer applications in Facebook. Later on, Facebook allowed these developers to collect information on the people that used the application if their privacy settings permitted it.
If he was allowed, what’s the problem?
Kogan was collecting the data for other purposes and provided it to a third party (and was most likely paid for it), Cambridge Analytica. It is reported that Cambridge Analytica paid Kogan the cost of developing the app ($800,000 USD). Then again, when individuals signed up for his application, the terms and conditions stated that the information they are allowing them for access could be used for “commercial use”.
This boils down to a greater issue: our society’s dependancy on technology. We have developed a need to feel included and more inclined to jumping on the bandwagon without informing ourselves. In this case, most users that used This Is Your Digital Life did not read the terms and conditions of the app they were using. The majority of us don’t.
While Cambridge Analytica denies that any information that they initially gathered from Facebook and Kogan was connected to the outcome of the 2015-2016 Presidential elections, it is not unlikely. The data was destroyed when Facebook found out about the scandal in 2015 and the application was taken down. This would have given the research firm about 8 months to analyze the demographic and psychological profiles of the Facebook users they collected data from.
What can you do?
Facebook has promised to make their privacy settings more user friendly so users can accurately control what they are signing up for. In the mean time, YOU need to read the terms and conditions of everything you are using. That includes Facebook itself and all other applications.
At this point if you are on social media, you should know that everything is collecting data about you. It is up to you to limit your data collection as much as possible. Be diligent and read everything before signing up.