Facebook data breaching accusation 2018 – facebook accused and sued for selling the personal data of its 50 million users. The CEO Mark Zuckerberg apologized and promised to take firm actions against access to this information.


Accused & sued: Facebook data breaching

For the past few days, the news of Facebook, and other platforms making bucks from people’s personal data has been doing the rounds. Now, a whistleblower has put allegations on the world’s largest social media network, that the Cambridge Analytica, a British political consultancy has accessed the user’s information improperly to develop American voters profile that was used in the presidential election of 2016.

In response to the allegations, the CEO, and co-founder of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg said:

“This was a major breach of trust. I’m really sorry this happened. We have a basic responsibility to protect people’s data.”

Furthermore, in a post on Facebook, Zuckerberg gave a detailed explanation while stating that they “made mistakes, there’s more to do, and we need to step up and do it.”

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As a solution, he said that the company “will conduct a full audit of any app with suspicious activity. We will ban any developer from our platform that does not agree to a thorough audit.”

In addition to the Cambridge Analytica fiasco, FB has also been sued in San Jose and San Francisco’s federal courts for negligence, unfair competition and violations of federal security laws on the same matter.


Also, read: Google Bans Cryptocurrency & ICO Related Ads In Its Latest Policy

#DeleteFacebook trend on rising, Facebook stock affected

The moment you sign up for Facebook, it starts collecting your personal data and the more you use, the more it gains steam. With the addition of third-party apps like candy crush and Spotify among many more, it only adds to the stored data.

Information like name, date of birth, gender, mobile number, and emails are the required information for sign up, from where Facebook gets more personal data that is used to target the ads. Reportedly, Facebook collected the revenue of about $40.5 billion last year from advertising.

Despite Zuckerberg’s apology, the hashtag #DeleteFacebook remained popular while many advertisers like Mozilla suspended their ads on the platform. On Thursday, the Facebook stock share closed on a 2.7% down at $164.89 while the S$P 500 Index was down by 2.5 percent.

Though it has been reported that there are no signs of a shift in the advertising revenue model of the company yet, it’s a possibility that company would suffer from reputational costs. Since these allegations have been made, the company has already lost about $50 billion of its market value.

A signal why Blockchain based applications are future

Experts believe that the matter won’t recede now, rather it would come in full force that would make the advertisers re-evaluate their advertising strategy.

With Facebook first banning the cryptocurrency ads and now getting entangled in the sell-off of personal data mess, this surely raises the need for decentralized networks that can transform the online media space.

Just a few days back, Edward Snowden leaked the news of the US National Security Agency (NSA) extensively monitoring the activities of bitcoin users. Also, at the beginning of March, the world witnessed the Indian Punjab National Bank (PNB) fraud of about 11,400 crores by the diamond giant Nirav Modi.

The growing frauds and data breaches only make the need for a decentralized system via blockchain technology all the more urgent.

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