The data was obtained in 2014, when Cambridge Analytica, through an outside researcher, paid users small sums to take a personality quiz and download an app, which would scrape some private information from their profiles and from those of their friends — activity that Facebook permitted at the time. The approach was based on a technique pioneered at Cambridge University by data scientists who claimed it could reveal more about a person than even their parents or romantic partners knew. According to statista.com research in 2020, the number of Facebook users in India is expected to reach 262 million, up from 194.11 million in 2017. After controversy Cambridge Analytica scandal Facebook should have more concern about the user’s data in India. Upcoming elections might be a snare of data leakage. Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology is using harsh language to warn the U.S.-based social media company to protect users’ privacy in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
As we all aware from scandal, The personal information of tens of millions of Facebook users was leaked to London-based Cambridge Analytica, a voter-profiling firm that was hired by the campaign of U.S. President Donald Trump. As we are moving to digital social, parallel we are also moving to an unsecured digital world like trolling, scandal, Technical scam etc.
Is it right? That anyone can see or misuse our personal details. Not at all, we all want secure our data.
What is the Facebook data privacy scandal?
Facebook will pay a record $5bn fine to settle privacy concerns, the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has said.
The social network must also establish an independent privacy committee that Facebook’s chief executive Mark Zuckerberg will not have control over.
The FTC had been probing allegations political consultancy Cambridge Analytica improperly obtained the data of up to 87 million Facebook users.
The probe then widened to include other issues such as facial recognition.
The $5bn fine is believed to be the biggest ever imposed on any company for violating consumers’ privacy.
“Despite repeated promises to its billions of users worldwide that they could control how their personal information is shared, Facebook undermined consumers’ choices,” said FTC chairman Joe Simons.
Will the US break up the tech giants?
Technology giants’ power to be probed in US
He added that the heavy fine was designed “to change Facebook’s entire privacy culture to decrease the likelihood of continued violations”.
Facebook’s financial results reported on Wednesday did not reflect any move by customers to shun the network over privacy concerns. It said monthly active users had risen 8% in the second quarter. Revenues, mainly advertising sales, rose by 28%, beating analysts’ forecasts.
What did Facebook do wrong?
The FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection began investigating Facebook in March 2018 after it was revealed that personal data was illegally harvested from an online personality quiz and sold to Cambridge Analytica, a data analytics firm.
There were subsequent claims the data may have been used to try and influence the outcome of the 2016 US presidential election and the UK Brexit referendum.
Although only 270,000 people took the quiz, whistleblower Christopher Wylie alleges that the data of some 50 million users, mainly in the US, was harvested without their explicit consent via their friend networks.