World biggest social media network, Facebook is dealing with its largest data breach till the date. Millions of users profiles were leaked in the Facebook data breach.
The analytic firm, Cambridge Analytica illegally harvested over 50 million of Facebook users profile without their constant. According to the report at The Guardian, the harvested data was used for influencing the results of US elections in 2016.
The Facebook data breach was started in 2015 after an app “thisisyourdigitallife”, developed by Cambridge psychology professor Aleksander Kogan.
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What is Cambridge Analytica Firm?
Cambridge Analytica is a company that offers services to business and political parties to change the audience behavior.
It analyses the huge amount of consumer data and combines that with behavioral science to identify people. The organizations use that data to target peoples with marketing material. Cambridge Analytica uses social media such as Facebook and its own polling to collect data from wide range of sources.
How did Facebook Data Breach happen?
It was revealed that in 2014, 50 million Facebook user profiles were illegally harvested by the UK based academic, Aleksandre Kogan, and his company Global Science Research.
Aleksandre Kogan collected the information through the app called “thisisyourdigitallife”. The app collected the details of Americans who were paid to take surveys, but it also gathered data on those people’s Facebook friends.
More than 270,000 users registered using their Facebook account and were also paid for taking surveys. The app harvested information about their contacts and Facebook friends without their constant.
Aleksandre Kogan had a deal to share to share this information with Cambridge Analytica. According to a whistleblower, Christopher Wylie, most of this personal information had been taken without authorization. He said Cambridge Analytica used it to build a software program to predict and influence choices.
Cambridge Analytica denied any wrongdoing and stated that it did not harvest Facebook data and none of that is used in US 2016 presidential election.
Facebook Reply for Data Breach
Facebook has suspended accounts of Cambridge Analytica and several individuals from its site. Facebook also denies that there was a data breach.
Trump’s camp also denied involvement in this, stating that Cambridge Analytic’s data was never used for the presidential campaign since the RNC was used for voter data, not Cambridge Analytica.
According to the social media posts from the attorney general in Massachusetts, an investigation will be launched to check the issue. UK lawmaker Damian Collins stated that either Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg or senior executive of the firm will have to testify before the group.
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