Analysing Analytica: FB Data leak

Facebook seems to have landed itself in midst of a very big scandal. It’s currently facing a very big “data breach” allegation. So what’s the scam all about? What has actually happened? 

Cambridge Analytica: It’s a British organisation that was created in 2013 with funding from billionaire Republican donor Robert Mercer. It is a subsidiary of Strategic Communication Laboratories (SCL), a government and military contractor. Channel 4: In a sting operation by Britain’s Channel 4 News, CEO Alexander Nix is heard boasting to an undercover C4 reporter about his company and also parent company SCL using dirty tricks including staged bribery attempts and sending Ukrarian/Sri Lankan sex workers to seduce political opponents—to win elections. We also see him saying that the company helped Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta’s campaigns for the 2013 and 2017 elections. The point to be noted here is Cambridge Analytica was a major consultant in Trump’s campaign during the US 2016 presidential elections. What about Indian Clients? In India, SCL partners with a company called Ovleno Business Intelligence (OBI), which is owned by Amrish Tyagi, son of the senior JD(U) leader K C Tyagi. The company lists BJP, Congress and Janata Dal (United) as its political clients. Strategic Communications Laboratories Private Limited, an Indian company based out of Ghaziabad, counts both Tyagi and Nix as its directors. Lets leave the topic of their role in Indian politics at present. What are the allegations ? Christopher Wylie is the man at the centre of the Cambridge Analytica scandal.The whistleblower has accused his former employers of harvesting information from American Facebook users in order to pass it on to third parties affiliated with the Donald Trump campaign during the 2016 presidential election, enabling them to target potential swing voters with tailored party political advertising.

And how was that done? It all started with Psychologist and Data scientist Michal Kosinski from Stanford.He found that he could predict a lot about a person based on their Facebook activity.He created a personality quiz that required users to log in to Facebook to take it. Once they logged in, he collected data from the user's Facebook profile, including the list of pages they have "liked." He found that one’s FB activity was a surprisingly good predictor of his/her personality traits. A Psychology professor named Aleksandr Kogan who was working with Cambridge Analytica was asked to buy Kosinski's data. When Kosinski declined, Cambridge asked Kogan to create his own personality app to harvest data from Facebook users. What Kogan did was, he created this app called #thisisyourdigitallife an online personality quiz. Kogan attracted 270,000 Facebook users to take the quiz. Facebook at that time allowed Kogan's app to also collect a broad range of information about each authorized user's friends. The average Facebook user has hundreds of friends, so Kogan was able to leverage his user base of 270,000 people to harvest data for about 50 million Facebook users. 

Facebook says Kogan told them he was collecting the data only for academic purposes. But that wasn't true. Kogan shared this data with Cambridge Analytica for use in its ad-targeting work, thereby breaching rules. Cambridge paid Kogan a whopping than $800,000. 

In December 2015, it was revealed that Cambridge was using data harvested from Facebook in it’s work on the US Senator election campaign.Facebook quietly verified the leak and took steps to secure the data—making sure that Cambridge had deleted all it’s data. But with recent reports proving that it’s not true Facebook responded by banning Cambridge and several of its associates’ accounts from FB. How can this data breach affect elections ? Where conventional political advertising uses factors like age and ZIP code to target advertising, Cambridge used a technique called psychographics, which involves building psychological profiles of users that will then allow a campaign to predict exactly what kind of appeal will be most likely to convince any particular voter.

Where did FB go wrong? One of the most controversial features of Facebook's APIs for third-party apps was known as "Friends Permission." This feature gave developers the ability to not only gather information about their own users but also to get data about their friends. Facebook put an end to the Friends Permission feature in 2014.

The controversy surrounding Facebook's ties to Cambridge has mushroomed again after the whistleblower’s claims and the leaked video. British members of Parliament have summoned CEO Mark Zuckerberg to come to the UK to clear up the issue personally.

The larger concern for Facebook is that the Cambridge leak could be seen as just one example of many big yet obscure scams. FB has drawn criticism for its inaction in protecting users’ privacy. Inc’s shares have fallen up to 17 per cent over the controversy. The company has lost $60 billion of its stock market value in the last two days.It’s been the worst performer lately .

People from around the world are epxressing their wrath with several financial analysts too criticising it severely.Among the many voices calling for people to leave scandal-hit Facebook, one stands out: Brian Acton, the co-founder of messaging service WhatsApp, which Facebook now owns. Read his tweet below:

So was Facebook transparent enough with users about how their information would be used? Should it have done more to keep tabs on how third parties were using data?There could be major implications for the company's business model, which is based on selling user data to app developers and advertisers.

As users we must always be cautious while downloading or answering anything that concerns ur personal info. We constantly see some stupid links on FB like “Answer this quiz to find out your true love,which superhero do you resemble?Who were you in the previous birth, Who is ur best friend etc. More importantly we never actually care when any app lists out terms and conditions before accessing all our photos and FB info. Beware! In this digital world a single click can mean a lot.