Facebook Data Breach—Millions of US Voter Profiles

[Jack DeBear]

Revealed: 50 million Facebook profiles harvested for Cambridge Analytica in major data breach

Whistleblower describes how firm linked to former Trump adviser Steve Bannon compiled user data to target American voters

The data analytics firm that worked with Donald Trump’s election team and the winning Brexit campaign harvested millions of Facebook profiles of US voters, in one of the tech giant’s biggest ever data breaches, and used them to build a powerful software program to predict and influence choices at the ballot box.

<snip>

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/m ... s-election

“Facebook stock tanks after data breach report, shaving billions off company’s market value”

https://www.theverge.com/2018/3/19/1713 ... -analytica

“Lawmakers want Mark Zuckerberg to testify about the Facebook data breach”

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics ... ata-breach

[Catsumi]

Looking deep into our hearts and parts, we knew all along that FB was "harvesting" our personal information. Else why do they ask all those coy and cute questions about our schools, pals, shopping habits, likes and dislikes, etc?

Only the dimmest didn't understand where FB was going with the goods.

[Jack DeBear]

Um . . ..

Like, the short storeeee . . .?

Like, from Fox, you knoooow . . .?



And this from the first article I posted in my OP:



.....................................................................................................................................

And more . . ..

How Cambridge Analytica turned Facebook ‘likes’ into a lucrative political tool

The algorithm at the heart of the Facebook data breach sounds almost too dystopian to be real. It trawls through the most apparently trivial, throwaway postings –the “likes” users dole out as they browse the site – to gather sensitive personal information about sexual orientation, race, gender, even intelligence and childhood trauma.

<snip>

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2 ... -algorithm

And here, right now, the truth is liked only 4961 times.

[Jack DeBear]

The PM thing here (13:00) left me with a laugh.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FXdYSQ6nu-M

I hope this leaves the rest of you with a laugh.

Very clever along with all the insights.

[The Green Barbarian]

why was it ok when the Obama (his name be praised) used the exact same data in the 2012 election campaign? Oh right, because leftists are hypocrites.

[pepecat]

why was it ok when the Obama (his name be praised) used the exact same data in the 2012 election campaign? Oh right, because leftists are hypocrites.

Oh the irony! lol

[Jack DeBear]

Deep breath , , ,. So Bannon worked for Obama?

[Jack DeBear]

Wait a minute, I got it now!

Obama’s Facebook friends legally gave their friends' names to a data mining company, ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T4Av9Nmu4fY ), whereas Cambridge Analytica stole friends’ data through the people who signed up and completed a psychological test., ( http://www.Castanet.com/news/facebook-cambr ... d-to-know/ ).

Well, weeee doggies, feed me peanuts and call me Dumbo!

[Ka-El]

why was it ok when the Obama (his name be praised) used the exact same data in the 2012 election campaign?
Oh right, because leftists are hypocrites.

Yup, the same reason the usual suspects want to make this an issue with Trudeau while deflecting from Trump.

[GordonH]

FB users (or any online social media site) place far to much trust of their personal information with these sites.

Castanet is only site I've actually joined, all anyone gets is my first name..... no birth date... no location, unless you can find me by searching the: Second star to the right and straight on 'til morning (oh heads up this is Star Trek version not Peter Pan).

[Jack DeBear]

What’s the sense in just asking people how ‘stupid’ they can be to use social media?

(Except for Castanet and it’s users, of course )

Why not challenge them to substitute some of their 'Facebook' time to find out on their own?

This National Film Board interactive web series (that uses cookies constructively) really opened my eyes a few years ago.

Digital Literacy: A Crash Course in Privacy Protection

by David Finkelstein

In my opinion, digital literacy is fast becoming the most important component of the high school English curriculum, if not the entire curriculum. Moore’s Law tells us that computer processing power doubles every two years. This exponential growth has had a paradigm-shifting effect on the types of media consumed. The fundamental problem is that our capacity is now outreaching our understanding and we have entered an era of “elegant consumption.” We can use computers for many incredible tasks, but we don’t really understand how they work. Do Not Track, a thought-provoking interactive web series produced by the NFB, takes us inside our own personal online history. Using the information easily available to websites and trackers online, Do Not Track can tell who you are, where you are, and what your online habits are like, based solely on your browser history and the cookies stored on your computer. Digital literacy is a vital defence against this invasion of privacy.

<snip>

http://blog.nfb.ca/blog/2016/01/26/digi ... rotection/

. . . . . .

Do Not Track

https://donottrack-doc.com/en/intro/

And when people are ready to feed the shredder, there's this to help them out as well:

“Go Anonymous: How to Delete Your Entire Social Media Presence”

Many of the links in this article are kept up-to-date.

https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/delete-social-media/

[Jack DeBear]

"Elon Musk deletes Facebook accounts for Tesla and SpaceX"

http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/elon-mu ... -1.4590071

". . . a growing movement . . ."?

Tough for some to join I think.

But then . . . who knows?

The cult of Facebook

Quentin Fottrell

#DeleteFacebook is trending, but will people actually do it? Even given the recent brouhaha over Facebook’s privacy violations affecting 50 million people, that’s unlikely.

If you deactivate your account, or even just stop posting updates for a couple of weeks, Facebook (FB) has a virtual army — your Facebook friends — who will text, email and even find you on Twitter (TWTR) asking what’s wrong and imploring you to come back. With some 2.2 billion users worldwide, it would take a tectonic shift for people to delete their photos and walk away.

<snip>

https://www.msn.com/en-ca/money/compani ... spartanntp

Is there a 'cult of Castanet?'

Will I be texted, emailed, and / or found if I leave?

Interesting experiment . . ..

[Jack DeBear]

Nope, nothin’ yet . . ..

So Fottrell must be wrong . . ..

[Poindexter]

In the 90's the marketing department of the firm I worked at made a switch from mass marketing to what we called at the time 1:1 marketing. With a limited marketing budget it was proven to be more cost effective to send targeted email ads, junkmail and telemarketing tailored to individuals rather than by geography or demographics. This required profiles on customers thus creating demand for data mining, which back then was done primarily by tracking spending habits recorded by your credit and debit cards. That was the infancy of data mining and before Facebook had grown into the behemoth it is now. Facebook was a godsend for the industry because it provided direct access to most people's personal information.

While it's true Obama used facebook data mining, it was legal which is why everyone else did as well. The difference with Cambridge Analytica is they broke the law with the technology they used to mine the data. They placed an app on Facebook user's devices without consent when people took thier survey. They further broke laws when they forced this app without consent, on friends of the person who took the survey. These "3rd party apps" became illegal in 2014.

So while it's true that data mining, and in particular, using facebook is nothing new, there are laws regarding how it's done and the Mercer family's Cambridge Analytica is being accused of breaking these laws.

https://www.google.ca/amp/s/www.digital ... ivacy/amp/
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/5090 ... ly-voters/

Added: For enquiring minds, if you haven't already, take the time read up on the Mercer Family, owners of Cambridge Analytica. As one of thier former colleagues put it, "If the world knew what [Mercer] was trying to do, they wouldn't stand for it."
https://www.google.ca/amp/s/www.theatla ... le/514529/

[Jlabute]

Chris Wylie of Cambridge Analytica was paid $100,000 by the Trudeau government as well in 2016. Investigators have just raided CA.
Perhaps the liberals and NDP will put up a smoke screen now looking in to protecting Canadians from Facebook data breaches even after using CA services.

https://m.huffingtonpost.ca/2018/03/20/ndp-facebook-data-scandal-trudeau_a_23390760/