09 May “We should be concerned about our privacy”
As the furore over the Cambridge Analytica scandal continues to haunt the tech world, a data security expert tells us what they did wrong and why we should care reports Charlie Wetton
It’s caused outrage across the world, spawned the hashtag #deletefacebook and seen its maverick creator hauled before Congress in the US. It goes beyond the standard data breach scandals that we have become used to in this increasingly digital world. When the results of two of the most momentous elections in recent history, the US presidential election and the Brexit vote – get called into doubt, you know it goes further than anything we have seen before.
It all started with a data scientist at Cambridge University, Aleksandr Kogan. He created an app called ‘thisisyourdigitallife’. The app was provided to Cambridge Analytica who signed people up to take the digital survey on Facebook. The survey was only intended for academic use, but Facebook’s algorithms subsequently allowed the app to collect the personal information of every single survey taker as well as every one of their Facebook friends. Around 87 million accounts had their personal data harvested this way.
This, however was only part of the scandal, collecting the information was bad but nothing new. What Cambridge Analytica did with the information after they got it is where the real scandal lies. Cambridge Analytica had enough detailed information to create sophisticated psychological profiles of Facebook users.
An infographic breaking down the Cambridge Analytica scandal (click to enlarge)
In a world where online political campaigning is now so crucial, this information was a treasure chest for any group or candidate that could get hold of it. In the UK, a small Canadian consultancy company called AggregateIQ was paid a large sum of money by an offshoot group of the official Vote Leave campaign. AggregateIQ is affiliated with the now closed down SCL Group – the parent company of Cambridge Analytica. It led to calls from some for the Vote Leave campaign to be investigated by the Electoral Commission.
In the US, Cambridge Analytica worked directly for Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. It is not yet known how much impact they had on his success, but it is currently under criminal investigation although the Trump team has denied any wrongdoing. However, Channel 4 News aired an undercover report that showed the then Chief Executive of Cambridge Analytica, Alexander Nix boasting that they “ran all of (Donald Trump’s) digital campaign.”
For regular Facebook users though, what does this mean for them? “Everyone is responsible for their own accounts” according Dr Nikolaos Pitropakis, a cyber security expert at London South Bank University. “It’s up to us to expose as little information as we can about ourselves, our profiles should serve the minimum purpose… Extremely personal information should not be revealed on social media, not only because someone is going to do something like manipulate us in terms of voting. But also, that data can be used in other things, for example, phishing attacks or gaining access to our accounts.”
The outrage that is sweeping the globe is justified but with all social media, you can control how much about yourself you choose to reveal to the public and from now on, we should look a little closer at how much of our information is being collected and what it might be used for.
