Facebook is taking a lot of heat recently because of the Cambridge Analytica scandal. The issue escalated to a level where Mark Zuckerberg had to publicly apologize after #deletefacebook campaign went viral. It all started with Brian Acton, Co-Founder of WhatsApp sending out a tweet which said, it’s time to delete Facebook. This rapidly gained the attention of people worldwide and in no time Delete Facebook campaign went viral around the globe.
However, delete Facebook wasn’t the original issue here and this was just a result of one of the biggest scandal in recent times.
What is Facebook and Cambridge Analytica scandal?
In March of 2018, news broke out that Cambridge Analytica used an app to collect and share PII of over 50 million users worldwide. It all started with Cambridge Analytica getting access to an app that asked Facebook users a set of questions and while doing that collected data related to their friends as well. The app also collected data on what users liked on Facebook effectively creating a profile of likes and dislikes. Cambridge Analytica could have used the data to target these users with effective political advertising. This is not the first-time candidates used social media to gain information on potential voters. Back in 2012, President Obama’s team did a similar thing to gain insights about the potential voters. However, there’s a minor difference between the two. President Obama’s team specified users why the data is being collected and how it will be used but Cambridge Analytica obtained this data without specifying the users what their data was being used for. Fast forward to December of 2015, The Guardian reported that United States politician Ted Cruz along with Cambridge Analytica is using PII of Facebook users without their permission in the election campaign. Facebook approached Cambridge Analytica and demanded that the data they have collected is in violation of their rules and should be deleted immediately. Here everything gets tricky. Cambridge Analytica never deleted the data even after being asked by Facebook to do so and Facebook, for some reasons never investigated if the data was deleted as promised. Fast forward again to 2018, The New York Times and The Guardian again ran the story and now with more evidence and they collaborated with each other to investigate and report the breach and to share details. Both papers took help from Christopher Wylie, a former employee of Cambridge Analytica turned whistleblower presented information that The New York Times and The Guardian used as supporting evidence for the scandal.rolex replica sea dweller
This is not the first time Cambridge Analytica has been involved in something like this. Back in 2016, the company was accused of supporting persuadable voters to vote to leave the European Union. Articles by The Observer and Guardian newspapers, respectively published in February and May 2017, speculated in detail that Cambridge Analytica had influenced both the Brexit/Vote Leave option in the UK’s 2016 EU membership referendum.
Aftermath of the scandal
The scandal was obviously one of the biggest in recent years. After Mark Zuckerberg came forward, he shared some of the steps Facebook is taking to restrict developer access to the personal data. Also, Mark said that his team is working with developers who launched their apps on the Facebook platform before 2014 and have asked them to submit a report stating the data they have access to or Facebook will remove them. Facebook is working on a system where if a user goes without using an app for more than 3 months, the company will remove developer access to all the information.
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Conclusion
Facebook is now taking steps to restrict access as much as possible and in some cases cut off access as well. While that’s sure is a start, Facebook is miles away from gaining back the trust they lost due to this scandal. For users, it is high time to take a good look at your Facebook profile and block access to anything suspicious.
Facebook sure holds responsibility to what happened, but it is your job as well to make sure your data is safe and you don’t give access to every game, app or service.best swiss made replica watches