CAMBRIDGE ANALYTICA
The Facebook–Cambridge Analytica data scandal involves the collection of personally identifiable information of up to 87 million Facebook users that Cambridge Analytica began collecting in 2014. The data was used to influence voter opinion on behalf of politicians who hire them. Following the discovery, Facebook apologized amid public outcry and raised stock prices. The way that Cambridge Analytica collected the data was called "inappropriate".
In December 2015, The Guardian reported that United States Senator Ted Cruz was using data from this scandal and that the subjects of the data were unaware that companies were selling and politicians were buying their personal information. In March 2018, The New York Times, The Guardian and Channel 4 News made more detailed reports on the data scandal with new information from former Cambridge Analytica employee turned whistleblower Christopher Wylie, who provided clearer information about the size of the data collection, the nature of the personal information stolen, and communication among Facebook, Cambridge Analytica, and political representatives who hired Cambridge Analytica to use the data to influence voter opinion.
The scandal was significant for inciting public discussion on ethical standards for social media companies, political consulting organizations, and politicians. Consumer advocates called for greater consumer protection in online media and right to privacy as well as curbs on misinformation and propaganda.
Aleksandr Kogan, a data scientist at Cambridge University, developed an app called (thisisyourdigitallife). He provided the app to Cambridge Analytica. Cambridge Analytica in turn arranged an informed consent process for research in which several hundred thousand Facebook users would agree to complete a survey only for academic use. However, Facebook's design allowed this app to not only collect the personal information of people who agreed to take the survey, but also the personal information of all the people in those users' Facebook social network. In this way Cambridge Analytica acquired data for millions of Facebook users.
The New York times reported that dataset included information on 50 million Facebook users. According to Facebook, up to 87 million users had their data shared, with 70.6 million of those people from the United States.Cambridge Analytica says it only collected 30 million Facebook user profiles.
Facebook sent a message to these users believed to be affected, saying the information likely included one's "public profile, page likes, birthday and current city". Some of the app's users gave the app permission to access their News Feed, timeline, and messages. The data was detailed enough for Cambridge Analytica to create psychographical profiles of the subjects of the data. The data also included the locations of each person. For a given political campaign, the data was detailed enough to create a profile which suggested what kind of advertisement would be most effective to persuade a particular person in a particular location for some political event.
The New York Times and The Guardian reported that as of March 17, 2018 the data was available on the open Internet and available in general circulation.
Facebook director Mark Zuckerberg apologized for the situation with Cambridge Analytica, calling it an "issue," a "mistake" and a "breach of trust." Other Facebook officials argued against calling it a "data breach", arguing those who took the personality quiz originally consented to giving away their information. Zuckerberg pledged to make changes and reforms in Facebook policy to prevent similar breaches.[1 On March 25, 2018, Zuckerberg published a personal letter in various paper newspapers apologizing on behalf of Facebook. In April they decided to implement the EU's General Data Protection Regulation in all areas of operation and not just the EU.
Amazon said that they suspended Cambridge Analytica from using their Amazon Web Services when they learned that their service was collecting personal information.
The governments of India and Brazil demanded that Cambridge Analytica report how anyone used data from the breach in political campaigning, and various regional governments in the United States have lawsuits in their court systems from citizens affected by the data breach.
Mark Zuckerberg admits it was his personal mistake that he didn’t do enough to prevent Facebook from being used for harm during his testimony before Congress on April 10th, 2018. “That goes for fake news, foreign interference in elections and hate speech..” During the testimony, Mark Zuckerberg publicly apologized for the breach of private data: “It was my mistake, and I’m sorry. I started Facebook, I run it, and I’m responsible for what happens here.”
In his written testimony to the Senate, Zuckerberg acknowledges that the meddling with Russian elections should have been noticed and dealt with sooner. With the rapid growth of technology and the vast amount of users on Facebook there is a need increase security and safety measures. They have taken action to ensure more protection, there will be 5,000 employees added to the security and content review good team. The team has been directed to put all their efforts into creating a safer space for the community.
Zuckerberg explains that in 2013, researcher Aleksandr Kogan from Cambridge University created a personality quiz app, which was installed by 300,000 people. The app was then able to retrieve Facebook information, including those of the users’ friends and obtained by Kogan. It was not until 2015 that Zuckerberg had learned that these user information was shared by Kogan to Cambridge Analytica. Cambridge Analytica was subsequently asked to remove all the data, until it was later rediscovered by The Guardian, The New York Times and Channel 4 that the data was in fact not deleted.
Zuckerberg reveals that their response to the Russian interference was slow during the 2016 federal election. For years, prior to the 2016 U.S. presidential election, they were aware of Russian threats from “APT28”, a group linked to Russian military intelligence services. This group took under the name of DC Leaks, created fake personas to seed information to various journalists. DC Leaks was able to create confusion during the election by creating distrust through specifically attacking and promoting candidates. Zuckerberg explains that during the post-election period, they also discovered that a group known as the Internet Research Agency (IRA) was actively spreading disinformation and manipulating people in the U.S., Europe, and Russia by using Facebook as a platform with fake accounts. The accounts were shut once the situation was discovered.
