Facebook issue with Cambridge Analytica
Facebook is facing High degree investigation due to the leakage of user’s data. The user’s details are collected by Cambridge Analytica in a hidden way. Cambridge analytica is a political consulting firm that is backed by Donald Trump’s 2016 election campaign.
According to reports, 50 million user’s data has been gathered and used by Cambridge analytica to know and predict the citizens choice pattern, voting pattern and influence them for favourable votings. They developed the software to segregate the data on the basis of their voting pattern and to provide the data. Citizen of US and all the Facebook users are curious to know whether their data is secured or not.
So here comes out the question “How can I know that my data is secured or revealed” or “How can we trust facebook if they can’t keep our data safe”
Hardcore investigation is going to check how Cambridge Analytica used Facebook to influence elections in the US and around the world, and what this means for the tech giant’s future.
Facebook has developed a tool that will tell you, that you are the one out of the million users whose accounts are affected by data leakage breach or not. Log into your account and check whether your account data is shared with Cambridge analytica. Data must be shared with the app created for personality quiz named “This is Digital Life” in 2014, this app crawls the data, not the only users who used but also their friends too. It was too late when facebook limited the data apps can access. Through the app, CA member Aleksandr Kogan paid Facebook users in exchange for a detailed personality test, supposedly for academic research purposes. Facebook and its owner, Mark Zuckerberg said he can’t know the exact number of users who are actually affected by the breach, he came up to 87 million figures by calculating the maximum number of users affected after calculations.
What should users do for their own safety?
Before going to any other external links, before entering your login access make sure that you are aware of or you research the company is and how they can use your data. This is important for self-safety after this much trustworthy facebook breach. If the leakage could happen with a fully secured company like facebook then it’s better to take care of your accounts on your own according to a say “Prevention is better than cure”. You can learn how to check which apps are secured for your desktop and mobile phones before logging in, you can learn how to protect your personal information on Facebook.
Access to your own data additionally relies upon what the application or site asked and what you permitted. An application can request access to anything in your profile — and can proclaim some of that data “required” — and you need to decide in the event that you believe it with that information and on the off chance that you believe the developer to erase your data should you later remove the application.
While surfing Facebook, we might see some links which give us potential to click action button to check “Who is your well-wisher” or “how old will you look after 30 yrs” or “which Zodiac sign has the best compatibility with you”, but opening these sorts of link will give you only selective information which could be suitable with actuals or not but it may take all yours and your friend’s data like your likes, dislikes, personality pattern and sentiments etc.
After all this breach mess, Finally, Mark Zuckerberg speak up on his facebook page
On the 21st March, Zuckerberg said, I want to share an update on the Cambridge Analytica situation – including the steps we’ve already taken and our next steps to address this important issue.
We have a responsibility to protect your data, and if we can’t then we don’t deserve to serve you. I’ve been working to understand exactly what happened and how to make sure this doesn’t happen again. The good news is that the most important actions to prevent this from happening again today we have already taken years ago. But we also made mistakes, there’s more to do, and we need to step up and do it.This was a breach of trust between Kogan, Cambridge Analytica and Facebook. But it was also a breach of trust between Facebook and the people who share their data with us and expect us to protect it. We need to fix that. In this case, we already took the most important steps a few years ago in 2014 to prevent bad actors from accessing people’s information in this way
He promised in his words
“First, we will investigate all apps that had access to large amounts of information before we changed our platform to dramatically reduce data access in 2014, and we 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. And if we find developers that misused personally identifiable information, we will ban them and tell everyone affected by those apps. That includes people whose data Kogan misused here as well.
Second, we will restrict developers’ data access even further to prevent other kinds of abuse. For example, we will remove developers’ access to your data if you haven’t used their app in 3 months. We will reduce the data you give an app when you sign in — to only your name, profile photo, and email address. We’ll require developers to not only get approval but also sign a contract in order to ask anyone for access to their posts or other private data. And we’ll have more changes to share in the next few days.
Third, we want to make sure you understand which apps you’ve allowed accessing your data. In the next month, we will show everyone a tool at the top of your News Feed with the apps you’ve used and an easy way to revoke those apps’ permissions to your data. We already have a tool to do this in your privacy settings, and now we will put this tool at the top of your News Feed to make sure everyone sees it.
Beyond the steps we had already taken in 2014, I believe these are the next steps we must take to continue to secure our platform.
I started Facebook, and at the end of the day, I’m responsible for what happens on our platform. I’m serious about doing what it takes to protect our community. While this specific issue involving Cambridge Analytica should no longer happen with new apps today, that doesn’t change what happened in the past. We will learn from this experience to secure our platform further and make our community safer for everyone going forward.
I want to thank all of you who continue to believe in our mission and work to build this community together. I know it takes longer to fix all these issues than we’d like, but I promise you we’ll work through this and build a better service over the long term”.
This is how Zuckerberg gathered its user’s trust again. Cambridge Analytica is under investigation even after giving certifications of removing user’s data.
On 11th April, Zuckerberg Assured, that WhatsApp messages are not enquired while testifying before US Congress over Facebook’s recent data breach. The Facebook system will not be able to access user’s WhatsApp messages. Zuckerberg said his organization will do everything to guarantee fair polling happens in India and different nations.
This confirmation made by Zuckerberg has given relief to the users, who have been worried over in the fallout of information rupture embarrassment. “2018 is an important year for the whole world. Several countries like India, Pakistan will have elections. We’ll do everything possible to ensure these elections are safe,” Zuckerberg said.
The CEO and Founder of Most popular Social media platform “Facebook” felt SORRY for Facebook didn’t take care the policies and secured user’s data appropriately, at the point when their platform was being utilized for circulating news and was turning into an instrument for foreign interference in elections.
He also expressed regret that his company was slow to identify the Russian operations, which illegally benefitted Current President of USA Donald Trump.
Zuckerberg faced Congressional inquisition for 2 days at Capitol Hill to testify and to clear the incident of Facebook User data breach.
