“This
was a breach of trust, and I'm sorry we didn't do more at the time. We're now
taking steps to make sure this doesn't happen again”
Excerpt from Facebook's
full-page apology ad has appeared in many US and British Sunday newspapers
Facebook
is hot water....or a storm in a teacup, depending on how you look at the
situation.
Facebook
has been apologizing for the leak of their consumer data via the Cambridge
Analytica psychological profile quiz app back in 2014 as noted in the article “Facebook
Ads Apologise For Cambridge Analytica Scandal”, Published Monday March 26,
2018, The Jamaica Gleaner.
Their full-page apology ad has appeared in many notable US and British Sunday newspapers including:
1. The
New York Times
2. The
Washington Post
3. The
Sunday Times
4. The
Sunday Telegraph in the United Kingdom
Apparently,
the 270,000 Facebook users who did the quiz and were paid by the researcher to
do the psychological profile quiz back in 2014, probably gave more information
that they wanted.
The
Cambridge Analytica psychological profile quiz app also went on to collect the
data from some 50 to 86 million friends connected to those people. What seems
to be creating the problem is that Cambridge Analytica, a political consulting
firm affiliated with President Donald Trump's 2016 election campaign, created psychological
profiles that were used to:
1. Influence
how people vote
2. Influence
how people think about politics and society
US$6
million was paid by the during the 2016 election by President Donald Trump's
2016 election campaign. However, now that he's in power, he has since denied
any connection to the data collection practices of Cambridge Analytica, being
as they are a contractor.
So
why is there so much fuss about the collection of personal data by Cambridge
Analytica?
Cambridge
Analytica and Facebook - How Facebook
makes money from your Profile
It's
good to note that the ads have allowed voters to stop collecting so much data
from users smartphones when the login, quote: “We expect there are others. And
when we find them, we will ban them and tell everyone affected”.
This
is nothing new really.
The
Facebook app already has been known to take up a lot of space on most
smartphones as note in my Geezam blog article
entitled “How
to stop Facebook and Messenger from draining your battery”.
The
Facebook app causes the following problems in most smartphones:
1. 20%
reduction in the battery life for Google Android
2. 15%
reduction in the battery life for Apple iPhone
3. 500GB
Internal Storage when installed (Facebook)
Despite
this, users and advertises benefit! Facebook uses this access to your
smartphones to collect a vast amount of information on your smartphone usage
including:
1. Email
address
2. Strength
of your phone’s battery
3. Type
of smartphone you are using
4. News
Feed you read
5. Types
of Ads you enjoy clicking on
6. Websites
that you visit outside of Facebook
Most
of the data collection is done by AI (Artificial Intelligence) algorithms as
explained in my blog
article entitled “How
Facebook Ads is using AI to build their version of Google Adwords and Adsense”.
To
be clear, Facebook doesn't sell your data but access to your presence on their
Social Network as pointed out by their Data Policy, which was recently updated
in light of the scandal. This information is sold to Third Party advertisers
and analytics companies such as Cambridge Analytica, in order to generate more
targeted ad campaigns.
The
result is more ads in your Facebook feed as well as when you visit and login to
certain website that are tailored more to your Facebook profile. Facebook’s
business is valuable because it has so much personal data about its users.
Hence,
selling that data to advertisers would significantly decrease Facebook’s value,
as that what makes them valuable to advertisers and analytics companies in the
first place.
Facebook and Instagram –
Security Settings allow you to control Facebook Ads
Facebook
also taps into information shared on Instagram, which is also owned by Facebook
as noted in the article “Most
Americans don't know Instagram is owned by Facebook ― and that's no accident”,
published April 12, 2018, CBS News.
Instagram also taps into Facebook data, so anything you do on their Social Network influences what types of ads you see. To see exactly what information Facebook has about you, do the following:
1. Visit
Settings on Facebook
2. Click
on Download a copy of your Facebook data
under the General Tab
This
will give you all of the data Facebook has collected about you, from private messages
to photos to your search history.
You
can also control what ads Facebook can share with you as follows:
1. Click
on Settings
2. Click
Ads
3. View
Ad Preferences
This
show the interests Facebook thinks you have and advertisers use to target you.
They also show other information they might use to target you with, which you
can remove if you don’t want Facebook using the information to target you with
advertising.
Still,
you can stop Facebook from tracking you altogether by following these simple
hand instructions as noted in my blog article
entitled “How
to stop Facebook from tracking you on your smartphone and the Real World”.
Good
to note, your Security settings allow anyone, even casual advertisers with the
right software to scrape profile and collect data on as many people who have
left their Facebook Profiles as searchable by Google.
Most
Third-party apps such as Uber or Spotify are granted permission to tap into
your personal data via Facebook's Graph, in order to produce a better experience more tailored to
your personality.
To
be fair, advertisers and analytics companies that used access to your Facebook
metrics do not know that you clicked on their ads. Advertisers and analytics
companies can see demographic details about who sees their ads e.g. the number
of males or females in a particular part of Jamaica that clicked on an ad but
not the names and addresses of those persons.
This
is how Cambridge Analytica got access to so many users data via their
psychological profile quiz app: bulk data with no names. So they merely created
political campaigns to target certain people in certain part of the country
with certain ads that were tailored to their likes and dislikes, making to easy
to sway them to vote for Donald Trump.
So
if they have that level of access to your phone, is it possible that they may
also be spying on you.
Facebook is not spying
on you – If you opt in, your Data is for sale
Facebook
may be selling access to advertising products tailored to your profile, but
they do not know you.
According
to their Data Policy, Facebook does not collect your private messages, call
history or off-Facebook text message data, even your microphone as noted in the
article “This
is how Facebook uses your data for ad targeting”, published Apr 11, 2018 by
Kurt Wagner, Recode.
They might monitor your private messages, call
history or off-Facebook text message data to determine if they violate the
company’s policies, but they do not sell that information to advertisers.
However, if you did opt in to letting Facebook uses that data when you signed
up for an app, they can use this as indication to go ahead to sell that data.
This
was indeed the case with Cambridge Analytica psychological profile quiz app, as
the persons who took the quiz back in 2014 may have unwittingly given the app
full access to their phone in exchange to be paid for the data that was being
collected on them.
In
fact, many apps actually pay you via Paypal, Skrill, PerfectMoney or even
Bitcoin just to do surveys and quizzes as explained in my MICO Wars Blog article
entitled “How
Jamaicans with 5″ smartphone can make money using Apps”.
Facebook and Cambridge
Analytica - Media will soon stop swirling this teacup storm
So
to summarize, the main problem here is not that Facebook was selling its access
to your customer data to Cambridge Analytica, but rather that it was being used
by the Donald Trump Political campaign to influence people to vote in an election.
Cambridge Analytica has committed no wrong, as all the 270,000 Facebook users were paid, as is currently the case with most apps that pay you for your information.
Facebook
need not worry, for as soon as the media stop swirling this teacup storm, it’ll
be back to business as usual, as many, including these very same newspapers, benefit from their targeted advertising
services.
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