People are getting smarter with their data after Facebook scandal 8:29 AM ET Tue, 27 March 2018 | 03:57

Believe it or not, something good for consumers could come out of the Facebook data scandal.

To recap, a quiz app harvested 50 million Facebook profiles for data which were then sent over to Cambridge Analytica, a firm that was caught claiming it handled the digital aspects of President Donald Trump's 2016 election campaign.

The data was collected from people without their knowledge, but Facebook said that users had their privacy settings on to allow it.

Even as someone who covers technology extensively, it was a real eye-opener seeing what information Facebook is collecting, even though we give it permission to by signing up, then checking in to a place, or uploading a picture. Like many, I have recently downloaded a file that contains the information Facebook holds about me.

And on the weekend, Ars Technica highlighted a tweet from New Zealand man Dylan McKay who posted a picture of his call history with his partner's mum that Facebook had collected. On Sunday, the social network said this was done with users' permission.

This is the problem: We download apps and allow services to collect information about us without a second thought. The good to come out of this Facbeook episode is that people get smarter about their online footprint.