The problem was
Facebook admitted early 2018 that it had misused data associated to more than 50,000,000 users. Cambridge Analytica was a data analysis and collection agency that stole personal information from more than 50 millions users. Then, it targeted these people with political messages and ads (Rehman 2018). Facebook suffered a serious blow from the scandal. Multiple people have raised concerns about the company’s data security policies and disclosure guidelines. This incident brought to light Facebook’s privacy policies and business strategies.
Prevention
While technological companies may not be as fond on data audits but this allows companies to detect the risk of data being leaked early enough to take corrective steps. Due to the many repercussions that data mining can have on other organisations, businesses need to be open and detailed about what data they are gathering and how it will be used. Facebook was given unconfirmed assurances by Facebook that the mined data had been deleted. However, they failed to verify emotions and follow-up. Facebook must protect the privacy and data of users (Kozlowska (2018) These regulations may include strict policies for data users and extensive guidelines to assist enterprises in data utility. Cambridge Analytica took advantage this gap.
Taken measures
Mark Zuckerberg imposed strict limits on personal data usage. To access users’ data, companies must have prior permission. Social media giant Facebook will review any apps that allow for extensive data access, or have a questionable conduct on their platform. The restriction of data access was imposed on apps with inactive users within the last three month. Additionally, apps with inactive users over the last three months were not allowed to see a client’s biodata at first. Apps that required additional information had to be screened.
The end result
Cambridge Analytica Data used data from certain groups to produce customized political ads. It’s believed such advertisements can have an important influence on the election outcome. Cambridge Analytica might have influenced Facebook users by tailoring their advertising with views and data they did not consent to or give out. A democracy operating on the basis micro-targeted and finely targeted political advertising, especially those that target smaller sections of the population, faces insurmountable challenges at the societal level (Richterich 2018, 2018).
Aleksandr Kogan was a Cambridge University researcher who shared data from Facebook with Cambridge Analytica to help him target political ads. Researchers were affected by this scandal. It was possible that Facebook data theft would make it difficult to share information with scholars. The incident could also lead to restrictions on future research using Facebook data as a facilitator (Richterich 2018, 2018). People who gave their consent to Cambridge Analytica’s use of personal data were misled to believe that it would be used primarily for research purposes and not for ad targeting. Data thefts have damaged trust between the data mining companies and individual subjects.