Case study: Facebook–Cambridge Analytica data breach scandal

Cambridge Analytica is a federal data analytics, marketing, and consulting firm based in London, UK, that is accused of illegally obtaining Facebook data and using it to determine a variety of federal crusades. These crusades include those of American Senator Ted Cruz and, to an extent, Donald Trump and the Leave-EU Brexit campaign, which resulted in the UK’s withdrawal from the EU.  In 2018, the Facebook–Cambridge Analytica data scandal was a major disgrace, with Cambridge Analytica collecting the private data of millions of people’s Facebook profiles without their permission and using it for Political Advertising. It was defined as a watershed flash in the country’s understanding of private data, prompting a seventeen (17) per cent drop in Facebook’s cut-rate and summons for stricter laws governing tech companies’ usage of private data.

Background Information

Fotis International Law Firm  aims to provide our readers with a brief overview of the Facebook Data Breach that happened. A lot of people took a survey in 2014 that looked similar and included not only the user’s personally identifiable information or data but also the data of the user’s Facebook friends with the Company that worked for President Trump’s 2016 campaign. This is where Cambridge Analytica (CA) entered the picture, partnering with Aleksandr Kogan, a UK research academic who was using Facebook for research purposes. Kogan’s survey, which appeared innocuous and included over 100 personality traits with which surveyees could agree or disagree, was sent to 3L Americans.

But there’s a catch: to take the survey, surveyee’s must log in or sign up for Facebook, giving Kogan access to the user’s profile, birth date, and location. Kogan created a psychometric model, which is similar to a personality profile, by combining the survey results with the user’s Facebook data. The data was then combined with voter records and sent to CA by Kogan. CA claimed that the results of this survey, combined with the personal traits of various users and models, were crucial in determining how they profiled a user’s psychoneurosis and other susceptible traits.

In only a few months, two lakh twenty thousand people took part in the survey of Kogan, and data from up to 87 million Facebook user profiles were harvested, accounting for nearly a quarter of all Facebook users in the United States. The goal was to use the data to target users/surveyees with political messaging that would aid Trump’s campaign strategy, but the campaign objected. Even though Kogan’s work was for academic research, he shared the formulated data with CA, which is against Facebook’s policy. In response to the violation, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg stated that it was not a data breach because no passwords were stolen or any systems were infiltrated, but it was a violation of the terms of service. In response to the breach, the CEO of Facebook who is Mark Zuckerberg stated that it was not a data breach because no passwords were stolen or any systems were infiltrated, but rather a breach of contravention between Facebook and its users. The Federal Trade Commission of the US took up the investigation after that.

Facebook Data Breach

CA’s illegitimate procurement of personally identifiable data was first revealed in December 2015 by Harry Davies, a Guardian journalist. CA was working for US Senator Ted Cruz, according to Harry, and had obtained data from millions of Facebook accounts without their permission. Facebook declined to comment on the story other than to say that it was looking into it. The scandal finally blew up in March 2018 when a conspirator, Christopher Wylie, an ex-CA employee, was exposed. Christopher was an unidentified source for Cadwalladr’s article “The Great British Brexit Robbery” in 2017. This report was well-received, but it was met with scepticism in some quarters, prompting sceptical responses in publications such as The New York Times. In March 2018, the news organizations released their stories concurrently, causing a massive public outcry that resulted in more than $100 billion being deducted from Facebook’s retail funding in a matter of days. Senators from the US and the UK have demanded answers from Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Following the scandal, Mark Zuckerberg agreed to testify in front of the US Congress.

Summary of the Case

CA’s parent company, Strategic Communication Laboratories Group, was a private British behavioural and strategic research communication corporation. In the US and other countries, SCL sparked public outrage by obtaining data through data mining and data analysis on its users with the help of a university researcher named Aleksandr Kogan, who was tasked with developing an app called “This is your digital life” and along with that, he was told to create a survey on the behavioural patterns of users that he had obtained from Facebook’s social media users, to use the data for electoral/political purposes without the approval of Facebook or the users of Facebook, since the data was detailed enough to create a profile that implied which type of advertisement would be most effective in influencing them. Based on the findings, the data would be carefully targeted to key audience associations to change behaviour in line with SCL’s client’s objective, resulting in a breach of trust between Facebook and its users.

Legal Implications

As a result, the Facebook CEO was questioned, and the stock price dropped by seventeen (17) per cent. He was also requested to enforce strict regulations on the protection of users’ data. Users were afterwards told that the access they had provided for various applications had been withdrawn and reviewed in the settings, as well as there being audit trials on breach investigation. Meanwhile, Facebook has vowed to create an app that would require users to delete all of their Facebook web search data. CA has been the subject of multiple baseless allegations in past years, and despite the firm’s efforts to improve the record, it has been chastised for actions that are not only legal but also generally acknowledged as a routine component of internet promotion in both the federal and industrial sectors.

Julian Malins, a third-party auditor, was appointed by CA to look into the allegations of wrongdoing. According to the firm, the inquiry determined that the charges were not supported by the facts. Despite CA’s constant belief that its employees have acted ethically and lawfully, a belief that is now completely supported by Mr Malin’s declaration, the Company’s clients and suppliers have been driven away implicitly as a result of the media coverage. As a result, in May 2018, it was decided that continuing to manage the firm was no longer practicable, leaving CA with no practical alternative for bringing the firm into government.

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which had come into effect in May 2018, establishes logical data security laws across Europe. It applies to all companies that prepare private data about EU citizens, regardless of where they are situated. Processing is a comprehensive term that refers to everything linked to private data, such as how a company handles and uses data, such as settling, saving, using, and destroying it. 

While many of the GDPR’s requirements are based on EU data protection regulations, the GDPR has a greater reach, more precise standards, and ample penalties. For example, it necessitates a higher level of consent for the use of certain types of data and enhances people’s rights to request and shifting their data. Failure to comply with the GDPR can result in significant penalties, including fines of up to 4% of worldwide annual income for multiple violations or infringements. In terms of policy changes, data may only be accessed by others, including developers. If permissions are granted, data settings are stricter, and a research tool is used to scrutinize the search.

Regardless matter how many changes or updates are made to specific applications, the user of that platform should be aware of the types of personal data and apps to which rights should be granted. In addition, maintaining a check, such as evaluating account activity, revoking access to illegal applications, and monitoring its settings at regular intervals, is critical to keeping their data safe and being aware of the repercussions of a breach. The case of CA is the precedent. Countries should create a legal framework that will severely restrict the operations of firms like CA and prevent the globally uncontrolled exploitation of personal data on social media. No one can guarantee that a government would resist the temptation to utilize technology for its ends. It’s quite probable that it’s going on right now.

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Facebook parent Meta will pay $725M to settle a privacy suit over Cambridge Analytica

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Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg walks at the company's headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif., on April 4, 2013. Facebook parent company Meta has agreed to pay $725 million to settle a class-action privacy lawsuit. Marcio Jose Sanchez/AP hide caption

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg walks at the company's headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif., on April 4, 2013. Facebook parent company Meta has agreed to pay $725 million to settle a class-action privacy lawsuit.

Facebook parent company Meta has agreed to pay $725 million to settle a class-action lawsuit claiming it improperly shared users' information with Cambridge Analytica, a data analytics firm used by the Trump campaign.

The proposed settlement is a result of revelations in 2018 that information of up to 87 million people may have been improperly accessed by the third-party firm, which filed for bankruptcy in 2018. This is the largest recovery ever in a data privacy class action and the most Facebook has paid to settle a private class action, the plaintiffs' lawyers said in a court filing Thursday.

Meta did not admit wrongdoing and maintains that its users consented to the practices and suffered no actual damages. Meta spokesperson Dina El-Kassaby Luce said in a statement that the settlement was "in the best interest of its community and shareholders" and that the company has revamped its approach to privacy.

Plaintiffs' lawyers said about 250 million to 280 million people may be eligible for payments as part of the class action settlement. The amount of the individual payments will depend on the number of people who come forward with valid claims.

"The amount of the recovery is particularly striking given that Facebook argued that its users consented to the practices at issue, and that the class suffered no actual damages," the plaintiffs' lawyers said in the court filing.

4 Key Takeaways From Washington's Big Tech Hearing On 'Monopoly Power'

4 Key Takeaways From Washington's Big Tech Hearing On 'Monopoly Power'

FTC To Hold Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg Liable For Any Future Privacy Violations

FTC To Hold Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg Liable For Any Future Privacy Violations

Facebook's data leak to Cambridge Analytica sparked global backlash and government investigations into the company's privacy practices the past several years.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg gave high-profile testimonies in 2020 before Congress and as part of the Federal Trade Commission's privacy case for which Facebook also agreed to a $5 billion fine. The tech giant also agreed to pay $100 million to resolve U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission claims that Facebook misled investors about the risks of user data misuse.

Facebook first learned of the leak in 2015, tracing the violation back to a Cambridge University psychology professor who harvested data of Facebook users through an app to create a personality test and passed it on to Cambridge Analytica.

Facebook Pays $643,000 Fine For Role In Cambridge Analytica Scandal

Facebook Pays $643,000 Fine For Role In Cambridge Analytica Scandal

Cambridge Analytica was in the business to create psychological profiles of American voters so that campaigns could tailor their pitches to different people. The firm was used by Texas Sen. Ted Cruz's 2016 presidential campaign and then later by former President Donald Trump's campaign after he secured the Republican nomination.

According to a source close to the Trump campaign's data operations, Cambridge Analytica staffers did not use psychological profiling for his campaign but rather focused on more basic goals, like increasing online fundraising and reaching out to undecided voters.

Whistleblower Christopher Wylie then exposed the firm for its role in Brexit in 2019. He said Cambridge Analytica used Facebook user data to target people susceptible to conspiracy theories and convince British voters to support exiting the European Union. Former Trump adviser Steve Bannon was the vice president and U.S. hedge-fund billionaire Robert Mercer owned much of the firm at the time.

The court has set a hearing for March 2, 2023, when a federal judge is expected to give the settlement final approval.

NPR's Bobby Allyn contributed reporting.

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Here's everything you need to know about the Cambridge Analytica scandal

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  • Alongside social media giant Facebook, Cambridge Analytica is at the center of an ongoing dispute over the alleged harvesting and use of personal data. Both companies deny any wrongdoing.
  • Britain's Channel 4 News on Monday filmed senior executives at Cambridge Analytica, including its CEO Alexander Nix, suggesting the firm could use sex workers, bribes and misinformation in order to try and help political candidates win votes around the world.

The saga is significant because of the way the harvested data might have been used. It was allegedly utilized to direct messages for political campaigns supported by Cambridge Analytica, most notably Trump's election victory and the Brexit vote.

Here's everything you need to know about the Cambridge Analytica scandal.

Cambridge Analytica is in the midst of a media firestorm after an undercover sting operation caught senior executives boasting about psychological manipulation, entrapment techniques and fake news campaigns.

Alongside social media giant Facebook , the London-based elections consultancy is at the center of an ongoing dispute over the alleged harvesting and use of personal data. The allegations have heightened concerns over whether such data was then used to try and influence the outcome of the 2016 U.S. presidential election and the Brexit vote.

Both companies deny any wrongdoing.

What happened in the undercover operation?

In an explosive expose broadcast by Britain's Channel 4 News on Monday, senior executives at Cambridge Analytica, including its CEO Alexander Nix, were caught on camera suggesting the firm could use sex workers, bribes and misinformation in order to try and help political candidates win votes around the world.

Cambridge Analytica, however, has claimed that the reporters tricked the company, and that it never had any intention of carrying out the scenarios discussed.

The news channel's reporter posed as a representative of a wealthy Sri Lankan family looking to gain political standing. While executives initially denied they used "entrapment," after several meetings with the reporter, they put forward some tactics they could use.

How did this initially come to light?

The Channel 4 News investigation, broadcast Monday, followed articles published over the weekend by the New York Times and U.K. newspaper The Observer. The reports sought to outline how the data of millions of Facebook profiles ended up being given to Cambridge Analytica.

Academic Aleksandr Kogan and his company Global Science Research created an app called "thisisyourdigitallife" in 2014. Users were paid to take a psychological test and the app collected the data. It also gathered data on a person's Facebook friends, according to the reports.

In this way, 50 million Facebook profiles were mined for data. Kogan then shared this with Cambridge Analytica, which allowed the firm to build a software solution to help influence choices in elections, according to whistleblower Christopher Wylie , who revealed the alleged practices to both newspapers.

Wylie claimed the data sold to Cambridge Analytica was then used to develop "psychographic" profiles of people and deliver pro-Trump material to them online.

Cambridge Analytica has denied any of this data was used in connection to the Trump campaign.

How has Facebook responded?

Facebook has said that while the data was obtained by Cambridge Analytica legitimately, it claimed that Kogan "lied" to the social media platform and violated its policies in transferring the data.

Facebook banned Kogan's app in 2015 and ordered all parties he had given data to, including the consultancy, to destroy it. Recent reports surfaced suggesting that this data was not destroyed. Nonetheless, Cambridge Analytica argues it did delete the data when it was told to.

"The entire company is outraged we were deceived. We are committed to vigorously enforcing our policies to protect people's information and will take whatever steps are required to see that this happens," Facebook said in a statement released Tuesday.

The social media giant added its senior executives would continue to "work around the clock to get all the facts."

Although CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg have yet to speak publicly about the allegations, the social media company is expected to share more in briefs with congressional committees this week.

Why does this story matter?

Nonetheless, the role that marketing — or Cambridge Analytica — might have had to do with either of those political outcomes is not known. Cambridge Analytica has since denied the allegations made in the New York Times and Observer reports.

The Channel 4 News investigation featured undercover footage of Cambridge Analytic a's Nix claiming he met with Trump "many times" and that the company was largely responsible for a vast amount of the Trump campaign's activity in 2016.

"We did all the research, all the data, all the analytics, all the targeting… We ran all the digital campaign, the television campaign, and our data informed all the strategy," he said.

Speaking to CNBC in Hong Kong at the Credit Suisse Asian Investment Conference, former White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus said he wasn't sure about the accuracy of some of the claims about a data analytics firm and its influence on the U.S. presidential election.

What happens next?

U.S. senators have urged Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg to testify before Congress about how the social media giant will protect its users. Meanwhile, in the U.K., Zuckerberg has been summoned by the chairman of a parliamentary committee in order to explain the "catastrophic failure" to lawmakers.

The head of the European Parliament has also said it will carry out an investigation to see whether data was misused.

Alexander Nix, CEO of Cambridge Analytica, was suspended on Tuesday following Channel 4 News' undercover investigation.

"In the view of the board, Mr Nix's recent comments secretly recorded by Channel 4 and other allegations do not represent the values or operations of the firm and his suspension reflects the seriousness with which we view this violation," the embattled company said in a statement.

Cambridge Analytica said it would proceed to carry out a full and independent investigation following the reports.

— CNBC's Arjun Kharpal and Anita Balakrishnan contributed to this report.

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Facebook and Cambridge Analytica: What You Need to Know as Fallout Widens

By Kevin Granville

  • March 19, 2018

facebook cambridge analytica case study solution

Our report that a political firm hired by the Trump campaign acquired access to private data on millions of Facebook users has sparked new questions about how the social media giant protects user information.

Who collected all that data?

Cambridge Analytica, a political data firm hired by President Trump’s 2016 election campaign, gained access to private information on more than 50 million Facebook users. The firm offered tools that could identify the personalities of American voters and influence their behavior.

Cambridge has been largely funded by Robert Mercer, the wealthy Republican donor, and Stephen K. Bannon, a former adviser to the president who became an early board member and gave the firm its name. It has pitched its services to potential clients ranging from Mastercard and the New York Yankees to the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

On Monday, a British TV news report cast it in a harsher light, showing video of Cambridge Analytica executives offering to entrap politicians. A day later, as a furor grew, the company suspended its chief executive, Alexander Nix.

[Read more about how Cambridge Analytica and the Trump campaign became linked]

What kind of information was collected, and how was it acquired?

The data, a portion of which was viewed by The New York Times, included details on users’ identities, friend networks and “likes.” The idea was to map personality traits based on what people had liked on Facebook, and then use that information to target audiences with digital ads.

Researchers in 2014 asked users to take a personality survey and download an app, which scraped some private information from their profiles and those of their friends, activity that Facebook permitted at the time and has since banned.

The technique had been developed at Cambridge University’s Psychometrics Center. The center declined to work with Cambridge Analytica, but Aleksandr Kogan, a Russian-American psychology professor at the university, was willing.

Dr. Kogan built his own app and in June 2014 began harvesting data for Cambridge Analytica.

He ultimately provided over 50 million raw profiles to the firm, said Christopher Wylie, a data expert who oversaw Cambridge Analytica’s data harvesting. Only about 270,000 users — those who participated in the survey — had consented to having their data harvested, though they were all told that it was being used for academic use.

Facebook said no passwords or “sensitive pieces of information” had been taken, though information about a user’s location was available to Cambridge.

[Read more about the internal tension at the top of Facebook over the platform’s political exploitation]

So was Facebook hacked?

Facebook in recent days has insisted that what Cambridge did was not a data breach , because it routinely allows researchers to have access to user data for academic purposes — and users consent to this access when they create a Facebook account.

But Facebook prohibits this kind of data to be sold or transferred “to any ad network, data broker or other advertising or monetization-related service.” It says that was exactly what Dr. Kogan did, in providing the information to a political consulting firm.

Dr. Kogan declined to provide The Times with details of what had happened, citing nondisclosure agreements with Facebook and Cambridge Analytica.

Cambridge Analytica officials, after denying that they had obtained or used Facebook data, changed their story last week. In a statement to The Times, the company acknowledged that it had acquired the data, though it blamed Dr. Kogan for violating Facebook’s rules and said it had deleted the information as soon as it learned of the problem two years ago.

But the data, or at least copies, may still exist. The Times was recently able to view a set of raw data from the profiles Cambridge Analytica obtained.

What is Facebook doing in response?

The company issued a statement on Friday saying that in 2015, when it learned that Dr. Kogan’s research had been turned over to Cambridge Analytica, violating its terms of service, it removed Dr. Kogan’s app from the site. It said it had demanded and received certification that the data had been destroyed.

Facebook also said: “Several days ago, we received reports that, contrary to the certifications we were given, not all data was deleted. We are moving aggressively to determine the accuracy of these claims. If true, this is another unacceptable violation of trust and the commitments they made. We are suspending SCL/Cambridge Analytica, Wylie and Kogan from Facebook, pending further information.”

In a further step, Facebook said Monday that it had hired a digital forensics firm “to determine the accuracy of the claims that the Facebook data in question still exists.” It said that Cambridge Analytica had agreed to the review and that Dr. Kogan had given a verbal commitment, while Mr. Wylie “thus far has declined.”

[Read more about how to protect your data on Facebook]

What are others saying?

Facebook, already facing deep questions over the use of its platform by those seeking to spread Russian propaganda and fake news, is facing a renewed backlash after the news about Cambridge Analytica. Investors have not been pleased, sending shares of the company down more than 8 percent since Friday.

■The Federal Trade Commission said Tuesday it is investigating whether Facebook violated a 2011 consent agreement to keep users’ data private.

■ In Congress, Senators Amy Klobuchar, a Democrat from Minnesota, and John Kennedy, a Republican from Louisiana, have asked to hold a hearing on Facebook’s links to Cambridge Analytica. Republican leaders of the Senate Commerce Committee, led by John Thune of South Dakota, wrote a letter on Monday to Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, demanding answers to questions about how the data was collected.

■ A British Parliament committee sent a letter to Mr. Zuckerberg asking him to appear before the panel to answer questions on Facebook’s ties to Cambridge Analytica.

■ The attorney general of Massachusetts, Maura Healey, announced on Saturday that her office was opening an investigation. “Massachusetts residents deserve answers immediately from Facebook and Cambridge Analytica,” she said in a Twitter post . Facebook’s lack of disclosure on the harvesting of data could violate privacy laws in Britain and several states.

A Guide to Digital Safety

A few simple changes can go a long way toward protecting yourself and your information online..

A data breach into your health information  can leave you feeling helpless. But there are steps you can take to limit the potential harm.

Don’t know where to start? These easy-to-follow tips  and best practices  will keep you safe with minimal effort.

Your email address has become a digital bread crumb that companies can use to link your activity across sites. Here’s how you can limit this .

Protect your most sensitive accounts by creating unique passwords and adding extra layers of verification .

There are stronger methods of two-factor authentication than text messages. Here are the pros and cons of each .

Do you store photos, videos and important documents in the cloud? Make sure you keep a copy of what you hold most dear .

Browser extensions are free add-ons that you can use to slow down or stop data collection. Here are a few to try.

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The Facebook and Cambridge Analytica scandal, explained with a simple diagram

A visual of how it all fits together. They’re now shutting down.

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Cambridge Analytica, the political consulting firm that did work for the Trump campaign and harvested raw data from up to 87 million Facebook profiles, is shutting down .

There is a complicated web of relationships that explains how the Trump campaign, Cambridge Analytica, and Facebook are tied together, as my colleague Andrew Prokop explains in this excellent piece .

But if you need a refresher on how all the pieces fit together, this diagram helps make sense of it all.

1) Here’s the very simple version of the story

Facebook exposed data on up to 87 million Facebook users to a researcher who worked at Cambridge Analytica, which worked for the Trump campaign.

facebook cambridge analytica case study solution

2) But how is the Trump campaign connected to Cambridge Analytica?

Cambridge Analytica was created when Steve Bannon approached conservative megadonors Rebekah and Robert Mercer to fund a political consulting firm. Bannon became vice president of Cambridge Analytica, and during the 2016 election, he reached out to the Trump campaign to introduce the two sides.

Bannon, of course, eventually became a senior adviser to Trump before he was fired in August 2017.

facebook cambridge analytica case study solution

So what is the SCL Group, which does the work for Cambridge Analytica? It’s a public relations and messaging firm that has clients all around the world, and as Vox’s Andrew Prokop writes :

SCL tends to describe its capabilities in grandiose and somewhat unsettling language — the company has touted its expertise at ”psychological warfare” and “influence operations.” It’s long claimed that its sophisticated understanding of human psychology helps it target and persuade people of its clients’ preferred message.

This means, as the New York Times writes, Cambridge Analytica is basically a shell for the SCL Group.

3) How did Cambridge Analytica get its data?

Cambridge Analytica CEO Alexander Nix actually reached out to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange about the emails that were hacked from the Democratic National Committee’s servers, according to the Wall Street Journal .

But the more important part of this story is how Cambridge Analytica got its data from Facebook. And according to a former Cambridge Analytica employee , the firm got it through researcher Aleksandr Kogan, a Russian American who worked at the University of Cambridge.

facebook cambridge analytica case study solution

4) How did Kogan use Facebook to harvest up to 87 million user profiles?

Kogan built a Facebook app that was a quiz.

It not only collected data from people who took the quiz, but as my colleague Aja Romano writes, it exposed a loophole in Facebook API that allowed it to collect data from the Facebook friends of the quiz takers as well.

As Romano points out, Facebook prohibited the selling of data collected with this method, but Cambridge Analytica sold the data anyway.

facebook cambridge analytica case study solution

Why this is a Facebook scandal more than a Cambridge Analytica one

Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote in a response to this scandal , “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.”

But former Facebook employees have said that there’s a tension between the security team and the legal/policy team in terms of how they prioritize user protection in their decision-making.

“The people whose job is to protect the user always are fighting an uphill battle against the people whose job is to make money for the company,” Sandy Parakilas, who worked on the privacy side at Facebook, told the New York Times .

Now, there is a decent chance Cambridge Analytica’s work didn’t actually do much to elect Trump; the firm’s reputation in the political consulting community is less than stellar .

But this highlights a larger debate over how much users can trust Facebook with their data. Facebook allowed a third-party developer to engineer an application for the sole purpose of gathering data. And the developer was able to exploit a loophole to gather information on not only people who used the app but all their friends — without them knowing .

Still, it’s Cambridge Analytica paying the price today after losing multiple clients after the last several months of unflattering publicity.

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The Cambridge Analytica Facebook scandal

  • The Facebook data breach wasn’t a hack. It was a wake-up call.
  • Why investigators think Cambridge Analytica might have helped Russia spread fake news
  • 9 questions about Facebook and data sharing you were too embarrassed to ask
  • The case against Facebook
  • “Psychographic microtargeting”: what’s bullshit and what’s legit 
  • Mark Zuckerberg on Facebook’s hardest year, and what comes next
  • Mark Zuckerberg runs a nation-state, and he’s the king
  • Read Mark Zuckerberg’s prepared statement for congressional testimony
  • Mark Zuckerberg has been apologizing for reckless privacy violations since he was a freshman
  • I was Zuckerberg’s speechwriter. “Companies over countries” was his early motto.
  • What the government could actually do about Facebook
  • Why we can’t trust Facebook to police itself
  • Lawmakers seem confused about what Facebook does — and how to fix it
  • Banks have to know their customers. Shouldn’t Facebook and Twitter?

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Mark Zuckerberg Just Revealed 3 Steps Facebook Is Taking to Address the Cambridge Analytica Crisis

F acebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg has finally addressed the growing crisis confronting his company over how Cambridge Analytica allegedly used data collected from 50 million users without their direct consent in its work for Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. After days of silence, Zuckerberg on Wednesday outlined steps he said would protect users’ information in the future.

“We have a responsibility to protect your data, and if we can’t then we don’t deserve to serve you,” Zuckerberg said Wednesday in a lengthy Facebook post . “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.”

Facebook is planning to investigate all apps that have had access to users’ data prior to a change the company made in 2014 to limit the information third-party apps could receive, Zuckerberg said. Apps that do not agree to the audit will be banned, and Facebook will alert any users that may have had their information misused. The social media site is also planning to further limit the data that apps currently have access to and remove data access to apps a user hasn’t used in three months. Lastly, Facebook will be adding a tool that will help people understand what apps have access to their information and provide an easy way to revoke that access.

Facebook’s privacy crisis was brought to light after it was revealed that Cambridge Analytica had gained access to user data provided to a Facebook app “thisisyourdigitallife,” created by Cambridge University researcher Aleksandr Kogan. Kogan’s sharing of that information with Cambridge Analytica, a group that claimed to have helped get Trump elected, was a violation of Facebook’s terms of service. The app was downloaded by approximately 300,000 people after it was first created in 2013, according to Zuckerberg. Cambridge Analytica was able to leverage Kogan’s app to get data from 50 million users because thisisyourdigitallife didn’t just access the data of users that downloaded that app, it also grabbed data from users on their friends list.

Lawmakers in the United States have called on Zuckerberg to testify on Capitol Hill , and in Britain a parliamentary committee summoned him to answer questions on the matter.

Cambridge Analytica reportedly used the information from millions of Facebook users to better target and influence potential voters to support Trump. The company responded to the scandal in a statement denying that the data was used to influence the election. Cambridge Analytica added that all users’ data was deleted after the company learned it was in violation of Facebook’s terms of service. However, the company’s CEO Alexander Nix has been suspended pending an investigation.

Zuckerberg also provided a timeline for the events surrounding the Cambridge Analytica scandal.

Read Zuckerberg’s full post below:

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. Here’s a timeline of the events: In 2007, we launched the Facebook Platform with the vision that more apps should be social. Your calendar should be able to show your friends’ birthdays, your maps should show where your friends live, and your address book should show their pictures. To do this, we enabled people to log into apps and share who their friends were and some information about them. In 2013, a Cambridge University researcher named Aleksandr Kogan created a personality quiz app. It was installed by around 300,000 people who shared their data as well as some of their friends’ data. Given the way our platform worked at the time this meant Kogan was able to access tens of millions of their friends’ data. In 2014, to prevent abusive apps, we announced that we were changing the entire platform to dramatically limit the data apps could access. Most importantly, apps like Kogan’s could no longer ask for data about a person’s friends unless their friends had also authorized the app. We also required developers to get approval from us before they could request any sensitive data from people. These actions would prevent any app like Kogan’s from being able to access so much data today. In 2015, we learned from journalists at The Guardian that Kogan had shared data from his app with Cambridge Analytica. It is against our policies for developers to share data without people’s consent, so we immediately banned Kogan’s app from our platform, and demanded that Kogan and Cambridge Analytica formally certify that they had deleted all improperly acquired data. They provided these certifications. Last week, we learned from The Guardian, The New York Times and Channel 4 that Cambridge Analytica may not have deleted the data as they had certified. We immediately banned them from using any of our services. Cambridge Analytica claims they have already deleted the data and has agreed to a forensic audit by a firm we hired to confirm this. We’re also working with regulators as they investigate what happened. 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. But there’s more we need to do and I’ll outline those steps here: 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 to access 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.

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Facebook chairman and CEO Mark Zuckerberg testifies at a financial services committee hearing in Washington in 2019.

Facebook-Cambridge Analytica data breach lawsuit ends in 11th hour settlement

Dramatic move shows Mark Zuckerberg ‘desperate to avoid being questioned over cover-up’, says Observer journalist who exposed scandal

Facebook has dramatically agreed to settle a lawsuit seeking damages for allowing Cambridge Analytica access to the private data of tens of millions of users, four years after the Observer exposed the scandal that mired the tech giant in repeated controversy.

A court filing reveals that Meta, Facebook’s parent company, has in principle settled for an undisclosed sum a long-running lawsuit that claimed Facebook illegally shared user data with the UK analysis firm.

It follows revelations of mass data misuse made by a Cambridge Analytica whistleblower to the Observer in 2018, an exposé that forced chief executive Mark Zuckerberg to testify before Congress and led to the social media firm receiving a multibillion-pound fine. Days after the story was published, Facebook’s share price fell by the equivalent of more than $100bn.

However, some expressed dismay that the timing of the potential settlement would prevent Zuckerberg and Meta’s outgoing chief operating officer, Sheryl Sandberg, being made to testify during up to six hours of questioning by plaintiffs’ lawyers next month.

Carole Cadwalladr, the Observer journalist whose investigations into Facebook and Cambridge Analytica also helped inspire the Netflix film The Great Hack , said: “It is a measure of how desperate Zuckerberg is to avoid answering questions about Facebook’s cover-up of the Cambridge Analytica data breach that Facebook has settled this case just days away from him being cross-examined under oath for six hours.”

Carole Cadwalladr.

It emerged that Zuckerberg and Sandberg, who recently announced she would be stepping down in the autumn , would face questioning, with the depositions scheduled to take place from 20 September.

The latest developments follow a separate lawsuit last year that claimed Facebook paid $4.9bn more than necessary to the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in a settlement over the Cambridge Analytica scandal in order to protect Zuckerberg.

The lawsuit alleged that the size of the $5bn settlement was motivated by a desire to prevent Facebook’s founder from being named in the FTC complaint.

Cadwalladr added: “Facebook has proved that they are prepared to pay almost any sum of money to avoid their executives answering these questions. This settlement comes on top of the $5bn they already paid the FTC.

“The truth will come out one day – but today is not that day.”

In the new court filing, disclosed late on Friday, financial terms or details of the preliminary settlement are not given.

The Observer asked Facebook and its lawyers to share more details of the in-principle settlement but it declined to respond.

However, the filing does ask the judge in the San Francisco federal court to put the class action lawsuit on hold for 60 days until the lawyers for both plaintiffs and Facebook finalise a written settlement.

The four-year-old lawsuit, brought by a group of Facebook users, alleged that Facebook violated consumer privacy laws by sharing personal data of users with other firms such as Cambridge Analytica , which declared itself bankrupt two months after the Observer exposé.

Facebook users sued the company in 2018 after it emerged the British analytics firm connected to former US president Donald Trump’s successful 2016 campaign for the White House gained access to the data of as many as 87 million of the social media network’s subscribers.

It was thought that Meta could have been made to pay hundreds of millions of dollars had it lost the case.

Facebook has previously said its privacy practices are consistent with its disclosures and “do not support any legal claims”.

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When the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica data scandal was reported in early 2018, it became a watershed moment in widespread understanding of personal data. The fallout echoed through the investment community, as Facebook’s stock plummeted and calls for tighter regulation of tech companies’ use of personal data created uncertainty in the market over other technology stocks. The pressure was on equity funds to determine the best strategy for investments in companies harvesting large amounts of data. Questions about the implications of this scandal came to the fore, including who would be the market’s winners and losers, and clients turned to Third Bridge to increase their understanding and conviction.

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Third Bridge’s deep research team moved quickly to gauge the situation and understand the nuances important to equity fund clients, sourcing experts who could speak to the impact the data scandal could have on existing holdings while identifying who would potentially emerge as the winners and losers in the aftermath.

Third Bridge sourced custom experts – including former security and technology executives with Facebook and Cambridge Analytica – for multiple clients, helping them to fully understand the details of what occurred and impact to other companies in related sectors. The experts were able to clarify complex occurrences, implications for users and address how changes in privacy controls could impact future advertising revenues.

Given the high stakes and volatility of the situation (Facebook’s stock plummeted after the revelations in late Q1 2018, then rebounded for a promising Q2, then suffered the largest one-day drop in market history in Q3), Third Bridge was able to quickly provide the bespoke experts that could arm our clients with the insights needed to understand the extent of the damage and the likelihood of a recovery above and beyond the limited and short-term views of sell-side research.

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Case Study on Cambridge Analytica embezzling on Facebook users data

facebook cambridge analytica case study solution

Cambridge Analytica is a London, UK–based federal, data analytics, promoting, and consulting firm, which is involved in illegally sourcing Facebook data and utilizing it to determine a variation of federal crusades. These crusades constitute those of American Senator Ted Cruz and likewise of Donald Trump as well as the Leave-EU Brexit campaign, occurring in the United Kingdom’s resignation from the EU. Cambridge Analytica has offices in London, New York, and Washington DC. 

The Facebook–Cambridge Analytica data scandal was a major disgrace in spring 2018 where Cambridge Analytica collected the private data of millions of people’s Facebook profiles without their approval and handled it for Political Advertising. It has been defined as watershed flash in the country’s understanding of private data and hastened a 17% fall in Facebook’s cut-rate and summons for stronger law of tech firm’s use of private data.

Background Information

In 2014 many of us might have taken a survey which looked alike survey of varied things which has included not just the user’s personally identifiable information/ data, but also the user’s Facebook friend’s data with the company that worked for the President Trump’s 2016 campaign. This is where the research firm Cambridge Analytica came into the picture, CA partnered with the UK research academic Aleksandr Kogan who was using Facebook for research purposes. The survey Kogan had formulated was been sent to 3L Americans which looked innocuous and included over 100 personality traits that allow surveyees to agree or disagree with. But there is a catch, surveyee’s need to log in or signup to Facebook to take the survey, which gave Kogan access to the user’s profile, birth date, location, and most importantly user’s Facebook likes. Kogan combined the survey outcomes/ results with the user’s Facebook data to develop a psychometric model which is a sort of personality profile. Kogan then combined the survey data with voter records and sent the data to CA. CA claimed that this survey’s outcomes combined with that of personal traits of varied users and models were a key to how they profiled a user and their psychoneurosis and other susceptible traits. Not just that, Kogan and CA even procured the user’s Facebook friend’s data by utilizing the same profile model. In just a few months, two lakh twenty thousand people took part in Kogan’s survey and data of up to 87 Million Facebook user’s profile data was harvested, which is close to one-quarter of all US Facebook users. The motive was to use the procured data to target users/surveyees with political messaging which helps trumps campaign strategy, but the campaign disagreed with it. Kogan’s work was for academic research but Kogan shared the formulated data with CA, which is a violation of Facebook’s policy. Upon this violation, Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg said it is not a data breach because no passwords were stolen nor any of the systems were infiltrated but there was a breach of contravention amid Facebook and its users. The following investigation was taken up by the US federal trade commission.

Facebook Data Breach

The illegitimate procurement of personally Identifiable data by CA was first disclosed in December 2015 by Harry Davies, a journalist for The Guardian. Harry reported that CA was functioning for US Senator Ted Cruz using data procured from millions of user’s Facebook accounts without their approval. Facebook disapproved to comment on the story other than to say it was examining and investigating. Additional reports go around within the Swiss publication “Das Magazin” by Hannes Grasseger and Mikael Krogerus, Carole Cadwalladr in “The Guardian”, and Mattathias Schwartz in “The Intercept” in the months of December 2016, February 2017, March 2017 respectively. Facebook disapproved to clarify on the affirm in any of the articles.

The scandal finally exploded in March 2018 with the exposure of a conspirator, an ex-Cambridge Analytica employee Christopher Wylie. Christopher was an unidentified source for an article in 2017 in The observer by Cadwalladr, titled “The Great British Brexit Robbery”. This report went vigorous but was disapproved in some quarters, prompting skeptical reply in The Newyork Times among others. Cadwalladr Jane worked with Wylie for a year to persuade him to come forward like a conspirator, who later brought in channel 4 News in the UK and The New York Times due to licit warning against The Guardian and The Observer by CA. The three news organizations publicized concurrently on March 17, 2018, and caused an enormous communal whoop, and which affected more than $100 billion was clocked off Facebook’s retail funding in days. Senators in the US and UK called for answers from Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. The scandal later led Mark Zuckerberg to agree, and testify in front of the United States Congress.

Case Summary

Strategic Communication Laboratories group the parent company of CA was a private British behavioral and strategic research communication firm. In the US and other countries, SCL generated public scandal typically over its subsidiary CA, by procuring data through data mining, data analysis on its public with the association of an academic researcher named Aleksandr Kogan who was told to develop an app called “This is your digital life” and alongside he was told to formulate a survey on the behavioral patterns of users which he has procured from the social media users of Facebook, and meant to utilize the data without the approval of Facebook nor the user’s of Facebook for electoral/ political purposes as the data was detail enough to create a profile which implied which kind of advertisement would be most efficient to influence a distinct person in a distinct location for the federal event. Based on results, the information would then be precisely targeted to key audience associations to alter behavior in accordance with the intent of SCL’s client, which led to a breach of trust amid Facebook and its users.

As a result, the Facebook CEO was asked for the explanation and there was a fall of 17%in share price and was asked to impose strict regulations on the privacy of the user’s personal data. Later, the users were notified about the access granted by them for different applications to be revoked and analyzed in the settings alongside there audit trials on breach investigation. Meanwhile, Facebook promised to develop an app to force delete all the Facebook web search data by its users.

Over the earlier several months, Cambridge Analytica has been the name of numerous unfounded allegations and, despite the firms attempting to improve the record, has been reviled for activities that are not only legal but also widely accepted as a standard component of online promotion in both the federal and industrial areas.

Cambridge Analytica hired a third-party auditor, Julian Malins, to investigate the accusations of wrongdoing. The firm said that the investigation resolved that the allegations were not “carried out by the facts.” Notwithstanding Cambridge Analytica’s consistent reliance that its employees have performed ethically and legally, which view is now fully approved by Mr. Malin’s statement, the offense of media coverage has driven away implicitly all of the Company’s clients and suppliers. As a result, On may 1st 2018 it has been settled that it is no longer viable to remain running the Firm, which left Cambridge Analytica with no practical option for placing the Firm into government.

Changes in Policy/General Data Protection Regulation

General Data Protection Regulation, which went into impact 25 May 2018, plans logical data security laws over Europe. It pertains to all firms that prepare private data about people in the EU, notwithstanding where the firm is based. Processing is interpreted broadly and points to anything correlated to private data, including how a firm manages and succeeds data, such as settling, saving, utilizing and damaging data.

While many of the laws of this regulation build on EU data protection laws, the GDPR has a broader scope, more determined rules, and ample fines. For example, it needs a higher model of approval for utilizing some sorts of data and expands the rights that people have for obtaining and shifting their data. Crash to comply with the GDPR can succeed in notable penalties, up to four percent of global year-long income for several violations or infringements.

Coming to the policy changes with regard to data accessible by others and even the developers only upon granting permissions and stricter data settings and a research tool to scrutinize the search.

Nevertheless how many ever changes or updations are done to specific applications, the user of that particular platform should be aware of what kind of personal data and what kind of applications he/she should grant permissions to. Alongside, keeping a check i.e reviewing the account activity, revoking the access of illicit applications, and checking its settings at regular time intervals are important to keep their data safe, and being aware of the consequences the breach can impact on them.

Author: Komati Monika, Intern at Legal Desire (2020)

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COMMENTS

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    Case study: Facebook-Cambridge Analytica data breach scandal Cambridge Analytica is a federal data analytics, marketing, and consulting firm based in London, UK, that is accused of illegally obtaining Facebook data and using it to determine a variety of federal crusades.

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