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Cambridge Analytica May Have Had Facebook Data From 87 Million People (recode.net)
Cambridge Analytica may have had data from more unwitting Facebook usersthan originally thought. From a report: Facebook now says that the data firm, which collected data about users without their permission, may have collected data on as many as 87 million people. Original reports from the New York Times pegged that number at closer to 50 million people. "In total, we believe the Facebook information of up to 87 million people -- mostly in the U.S." may have been improperly shared with Cambridge Analytica by apps that they or their friends used," Facebook CTO Mike Schroepfer wrote in a blog post Wednesday. From Facebook's blog post, "Given the scale and sophistication of the activity we've seen, we believe most people on Facebook could have had their public profile scraped in this way. "
Trump + 13 trolls + $100K > Clinton + $1.5B + media collusion + foreign collusion + illegal votes
But in Obamaâ(TM)s case, direct users knew they were handing over their data to a political campaign. In the Cambridge Analytica case, users only knew were taking a personality quiz for academic purposes.
If you don't want someone seeing your public profile data, don't take their "personality quiz", because even at best that "quiz" for "academic purposes" has the intent of finding things out about you that you may not want to expose. In a similar vein, don't take the MMP (Minnesota Multi-phasic mumble something) if you don't want the results known by anyone.
And for God's sake, if you don't want someone to see your public profile data, don't give your name to them so they can go look it up easily.
The Obama campaign used the data to have their supporters contact their most persuadable friends. Cambridge Analytica targeted users and their friends directly with digital ads.
The only difference is a difference that isn't a difference. Obama had volunteers contact people. Cambridge Analytical did it directly.
If you don't want anyone to know your public profile data, don't post it to a place where they call it a "public profile". What would a reasonable person expect would happen with a "public profile" but be viewable, and thus harvestable, by the PUBLIC?