Since 2004, millions of people around the world have been documenting their daily lives on Facebook. In a bid to keep in touch with old friends and make new ones, they’ve shared their private thoughts, birthdays, relationship status, political leanings – even what they ate, and where they ate it. This created a treasure trove of data, which was worth a fortune to the right people – for all the wrong reasons.

Last month, news broke that Cambridge Analytica, a UK-based consultancy firm, had lifted the information from tens of millions of Facebook users through ‘data mining’. This information was then used to help political candidates in the run-up to the 2016 US election.





What is data mining, and what is Cambridge Analytica?

The Economic Times defines data mining as “a process used to extract usable data from a larger set of any raw data”. Data mining in itself is no bad thing – it is common practice by businesses wanting to understand their consumer base, and increase sales. Most of us are quite aware of this happening and see targeted advertisements every day. We might go online to purchase baby clothes, and later see an advertisement for prams. This happens because companies like Amazon and Google are able to track their visitors’ Internet use for a certain amount of time, through ‘cookies’.

Cambridge Analytica is a political consulting firm company that specializes in data analytics. They gather and collate data, including personal information, and they then use this information to help their clients target audiences more effectively. In fact, Cambridge Analytica claims to be able to ‘change audience behavior’. The firm was used by Donald Trump and his team in the run-up to the 2016 presidential election to do just this.

Sensing a huge opportunity, the consulting firm found a way to access and gather data from up to 87 million Facebook users, without their explicit agreement. From a large amount of personal information they gathered, they were able to develop personality ‘profiles’ to match users with adverts and content they were most likely to respond to. This was supposed to influence people’s voting decisions.

How did Cambridge Analytica get the data in the first place?

Christopher Wylie, a former employee, said the company was able to use an app called ‘This is Your Digital Life’ – a personality quiz developed by academic researcher Aleksandr Kogan. Thanks to Facebook’s lax user privacy, the app was able to extract not only the data of people who took it but their friends too. This included information that was not publicly shared. Kogan later passed this data to Cambridge Analytica. This kind of data sharing is said to have been common practice and is certainly not something that Facebook ever attempted to draw attention to or stop.

Despite many warnings from experts that something like this could happen, it was only when this scandal broke that the public began to express outrage and concern at how Facebook was storing and using personal data. Facebook keeps comprehensive data on every single one of its users, not just about what they do on its site, but every IP address that has ever been used to access an account.

Many users are aware that Facebook stores this kind of data, but few were aware that all of this could be shared with third-party apps. These are applications that allow a user access to their Facebook account – something that is increasingly common. Such apps include Spotify and Candy Crush. Users fall victim to the convenience of only remembering one password but at the expense of their data. App developers can then use the information gathered to help create future products, or, like Kogan, they can sell it. It has even been reported that Facebook users’ login details have been sold on the ‘dark web’ for as little as $5.20 each.





Who is to blame?

Just how responsible Facebook is for the scandal is up for debate. CEO Mark Zuckerberg has a history of trying to distance himself with Facebook’s issues when they arise. This came to light during the outcry against the ‘fake news’ that was appearing on the site – spurious stories and information designed to influence users’ opinions and actions. This reached its height during the 2016 election campaigns.

Far from taking responsibility for any of this, Zuckerberg said that he and the rest of the Facebook management team were “also victims”, adding that such concern was unnecessary because much of ‘fake news’ is “just opinions that people disagree with”. Similarly, although the CEO has issued a full apology for the data breach, his statement that “at the end of the day” he is responsible for all that Facebook does almost suggest that the CEO was unaware of what was happening. However, Facebook’s entire business model relies on data sharing, because it is monetized through advertisements.

Social media users themselves must share some of the blame. Very few users read Facebook’s terms of service or checked their privacy settings. This is likely because they trusted the site, and did not expect their data to be exploited and shared.

While Mark Zuckerberg might be sorry for the breach, he had to have known it was possible. The company will certainly now be facing an uphill battle, having already lost around 2.8 million US users under 25 during 2017. Zuckerberg laying out changes that Facebook will make to keep data secure in the future may be too little, too late.

Does it matter who has our data?

Some commentators are keen to point out that it is Facebook’s lax security and Cambridge Analytica’s user profiling that allowed Donald Trump to become president. In fact, Alexander Nix, who was CEO of the consulting firm during the time, gladly took the credit for Trump’s success. However, it is unlikely that the company had that much of an impact on the election result because the only method they had of influencing voters was through targeted advertising. It is highly unlikely that this alone could alter a user’s political beliefs. However, with enough data, Facebook may soon be able to do this, as well as decide what information we do and do not have access to.





Some Facebook users have no issues with Facebook knowing their personal data because it is information they have already knowingly shared on a public forum. However, most people have no idea that Facebook is able to access microphones, webcams, stores facial recognition data, and can access every contact in their phonebook. Most users would agree that such examples are an extreme and unnecessary breach of privacy. More to the point, because we have never before experienced data gathering on this scale, we cannot predict what the consequences will be. More than anything, the scandal has been a wake-up call for Facebook users, who may well decide that the benefits are not worth the risks.

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