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Did Cambridge Analytica Harvest 50 Million Facebook Profiles? (theguardian.com)
Slashdot reader umafuckit shared this article from The Guardian:
The data analytics firm that worked with Donald Trump's election team and the winning Brexit campaign harvested millions of Facebook profiles of U.S. 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... Christopher Wylie, who worked with a Cambridge University academic to obtain the data, told the Observer: "We exploited Facebook to harvest millions of people's profiles. And built models to exploit what we knew about them and target their inner demons. That was the basis the entire company was built on."
Documents seen by the Observer, and confirmed by a Facebook statement, show that by late 2015 the company had found out that information had been harvested on an unprecedented scale. However, at the time it failed to alert users and took only limited steps to recover and secure the private information of more than 50 million individuals... On Friday, four days after the Observer sought comment for this story, but more than two years after the data breach was first reported, Facebook announced that it was suspending Cambridge Analytica and Kogan from the platform, pending further information over misuse of data. Separately, Facebook's external lawyers warned the Observer on Friday it was making "false and defamatory" allegations, and reserved Facebook's legal position...
The evidence Wylie supplied to U.K. and U.S. authorities includes a letter from Facebook's own lawyers sent to him in August 2016, asking him to destroy any data he held that had been collected by GSR, the company set up by Kogan to harvest the profiles... Facebook did not pursue a response when the letter initially went unanswered for weeks because Wylie was travelling, nor did it follow up with forensic checks on his computers or storage, he said. "That to me was the most astonishing thing. They waited two years and did absolutely nothing to check that the data was deleted. All they asked me to do was tick a box on a form and post it back."
Wylie worked with Aleksandr Kogan, the creator of the "thisisyourdigitallife" app, "who has previously unreported links to a Russian university and took Russian grants for research," according to the article. Kogan "had a licence from Facebook to collect profile data, but it was for research purposes only. So when he hoovered up information for the commercial venture, he was violating the company's terms...
"At the time, more than 50 million profiles represented around a third of active North American Facebook users, and nearly a quarter of potential U.S. voters."
Documents seen by the Observer, and confirmed by a Facebook statement, show that by late 2015 the company had found out that information had been harvested on an unprecedented scale. However, at the time it failed to alert users and took only limited steps to recover and secure the private information of more than 50 million individuals... On Friday, four days after the Observer sought comment for this story, but more than two years after the data breach was first reported, Facebook announced that it was suspending Cambridge Analytica and Kogan from the platform, pending further information over misuse of data. Separately, Facebook's external lawyers warned the Observer on Friday it was making "false and defamatory" allegations, and reserved Facebook's legal position...
The evidence Wylie supplied to U.K. and U.S. authorities includes a letter from Facebook's own lawyers sent to him in August 2016, asking him to destroy any data he held that had been collected by GSR, the company set up by Kogan to harvest the profiles... Facebook did not pursue a response when the letter initially went unanswered for weeks because Wylie was travelling, nor did it follow up with forensic checks on his computers or storage, he said. "That to me was the most astonishing thing. They waited two years and did absolutely nothing to check that the data was deleted. All they asked me to do was tick a box on a form and post it back."
Wylie worked with Aleksandr Kogan, the creator of the "thisisyourdigitallife" app, "who has previously unreported links to a Russian university and took Russian grants for research," according to the article. Kogan "had a licence from Facebook to collect profile data, but it was for research purposes only. So when he hoovered up information for the commercial venture, he was violating the company's terms...
"At the time, more than 50 million profiles represented around a third of active North American Facebook users, and nearly a quarter of potential U.S. voters."
...Facebook's liberal/socialist friends do the same thing.
They only complain when it's conservative interests.
F facebook and Zuck
If your Facebook Profile is set to "Public" then all the "Public" can see it. This is a "breach"? Maybe of the Facebook TOS, but those are meaningless.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Undoubtedly all users clicked accept on the EULA giving permission. It's just good business to grab the opportunities by the pussy when they avail themselves.
This is the new world economy. The Trumpverse! Love it or leave it! And if you want to ever reach heaven, VOTE REPUBLICAN! OR BURN IN HELL!!
Obama's presidential campaigns did substantially the same thing. Any politician who *isn't* using this data probably just can't afford it. The problem is the very existence of platforms like Facebook which enable the surveillance and manipulation of mass populations. The concentration and exercise of that type of power should be illegal.
Given I closed my Facebook account several years ago, I'm more worried about whether these bad actors managed to access Facebook's shadow profiles - since, unfortunately, most of my family is on Facebook.
For people who are actually on Facebook - including my family - I say "don't pretend to be outraged since you voluntarily decided to hand them all your personal information".
#DeleteChrome
If you posted stuff on facebook for the general public to read (which is the sole reason to post stuff on facebook as far as I can tell) then what's the problem with the general public reading it?
I don't see any reason why this is any kind of breach of privacy or a surprise.
Perhaps facebook's problem here is that they didn't negotiate a sufficiently high service charge or license fee for the third party use of their data but that's their problem to solve, nothing to do with the folks who entered their data on face book in the first place.
If you're a zombie and you know it, bite your friend!
So the only thing he did that made Facebook take action was violate their ToS. They're making it seem as if this is some generous act on their part, their tools did exactly what they were meant to do but they're upset he didn't grease their palms first.
Well this is it. Trump's campaign is finished.
Glad to see the media is inadvertently starting to contradict their theory that the Russians 'hacked' the election for trump in their never ending quest to not accept blame for their defeat. Keep doing what you're doing guys. Do the exact same thing you did last election. Thats right you did nothing wrong at all.
Whenever you collect that much information about everybody in one place you are going to become a target for intelligence agencies that don't give a dam about your terms of service or laws. Democtrats whine about Russia, but they totally underestimated the threat. They mocked Mitt Romney for naming Russia as the biggest threat in the 2012 Presidential Debates. President Obama quipped that the, "1980s are calling to ask for their foreign policy back". Well, who's laughing now? The world is full of nasty and violent people who hate us and will never change their views. Human nature doesn't change. We're just as violent and nasty today as we have always been and nothing will ever change that. The foreign policy of our nation ought to accommodate that reality instead of ignoring it. It's time to stop pretending that we don't have enemies. If anything good comes out of our collective humiliation at the hands of the Russians and our incompetent leaders it will be our rediscovery of these essential truths. We ought to be out getting payback instead of vaccilating over what needs to be done. The Russians and the Iranians are carving up the Middle East into spheres of influence and assassinating targets in the UK while Kim Jong Un does what he pleases on the Korean peninsula. Why aren't we taking the fight to the enemy?
There's little evidence that CA did anything better than guessing. These stories just burnish the reputation of a scam company.
Hell, where's the story on Theranos getting pulled out of Walgreen's because they're cutting too much into their profit margin.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
To all of those people who tell me, "I have nothing to hide, why should I care if they look at my data?"...
Got Yer Democracy!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
so you just know they supported Trump. That is the way of their kind.
considering I don't have a FB account and never will.
[...] in one of the tech giant's biggest ever data breaches [...]
How is this considered a data breach when all that data was made available by Facebook in the first place?
Is the way they were creating psychological profiles if people for political marketing. This is exactly the type of sick stuff privacy advocates have been cautioning about. This is the type of stuff we need safegaurds against.
Facebook and its users. They saved the Republic.
(Shrugs shoulders)
I guess there is nothing anyone can do.
(scuffs feet)
https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendaEM
Just read TFA. The answer is "no", CA did nothing illegal.
A Republican started paying for it during the primary. And for some reason Hillary didn't use much of what was in it.
And it doesn't mean that what is in the dossier is not true either.
Facebook and Twitter are toys in the hands of adults. Grow up. You don't need them. Pick up a phone or email. Even TEXTing is safer as it is between you, the person you send to, a few carriers and the NSA spying on us illegally.
Facebook and Twitter? You are asking to be spied on.
Delete your accounts and watch the value of those two companies crash and burn. That be nice. Hell I might even get a few servers in the fire sale after.
Q: "Did Cambridge Analytica Harvest 50 Million Facebook Profiles?"
A: TFA money quote: "hundreds of thousands of users were paid to take a personality test and agreed to have their data collected for academic use"
which implies that friend lists of 'hundreds of thousands' of participating (paid) users were used to issue an automated flurry of direct access to related profiles by user ID... and the rabbit hole went as deep as default 'public' profiles would permit. Like sheeple-product publicly declaring their family members and supplying relation codes because, they were asked, like it's all a fun computer game.
Some where past the 2 million mark or so Facebook (if they gave a damn) would have had tripwires snap and bright red flags dropping in front of their faces. Flags like direct and obvious API access abuse, access from one or a few accounts/networks faster than humanly possible, direct profile access by ID with no referrer page pointing to it, a 404 floods (if they were guessing). White hat 101 stuff. They do not care. They are on the verge of completely monetizing their APIs anyway to (finally!) inject real portfolio value into their company and want to hook institutional data junkies first.
But if anyone thinks data mining might have helped Trump win the election, it must be evil and frightening. Any data mining efforts to 'network' and oppose are kewl and just. This is as transparently duplicitous as Mayor Swivel-Head from The Nightmare Before Christmas.
I find it ironically hilarious -- without laughing -- that the same political contingent that blanches at the thought of a physical wall at the border of our sovereign country, is so easily duped into characterizing any IP access from the former Soviet bloc as the propaganda of Putin puppets, and not entrepreneurial enterprises for hire founded by young clever people like anywhere else in the connected world. The very same data games data mining Silicon Valley startups use to schmooze money from jargon-hypnotized investors or politically fueled troll farms like ShareBlue, when applied by clever Ukranian teenagers who are waiting for their Putin paycheck like I'm waiting for my Big Oil paycheck... becomes manipulative evil. It's almost even racist.
And when a Russian server farm operator tries to alert the world that Obama's FBI showed zero interest in obtaining logs from his rented servers that (he claimed) would illuminate another hop back to the attackers, you are forced to speculate that his Russian IP address was what the FBI was politically after.
Isn't it strange how this county map is so sharply delineated at the boundaries between populous urban centers and rural areas? Pretty precise to be a map of evil hacker influence, and funny how those (alleged) manipulated voters were targeted so completely and populous counties with their more centralized and automated voting systems, were not. Heck, it looks more like an actual grassroots uprising that won by a few hairs, assisted by the electoral college. A routine upset election, welcome to reality.
<blink>down the rabbit hole</blink>
It seems that the power establishment is systematically trying to determine everything that might have helped Trump (or other neo-nationalists like Brexit supporters) and declaring it to be illegal. They need to know what to crack down on so they don't let a mistake like this happen again (and by "mistake" I mean having voters actually determine the outcome of an election).
I've never had a facebook, twitter, instagram, or any other social disease, er platform, account. Also posting as AC.
So, what's the problem? Finding out what issues are important to people and focusing on them in a campaign is kinda fundamental to the whole process, no? It was okay in the '90's when Bill used "triangulation" (the same thing without Facebook) to target messaging.
People seem to be bent out of shape over this. I call it a genius decision. To take freely available information and use that to win an election... Honestly though, who thinks that both sides weren't doing this? I also guarantee you that both Obama campaigns were doing something similar. Everyone's pissed now because most of the media hate Trump.