Explained: Facebook's Cambridge Analytica Data Breach

Update: COMING soon...

    1.This is why most people want to delete   Facebook

2. Whistleblower says Cambridge Analytica 

'worked extensively' in India, names Congress as client

 BLOG PREPARED BY - SIMON

**This blog hovers around the doubts regarding CA data breach and answers the basic question - " How this breach affects us and our expectations towards social media platforms ? "**

First question comes up in our mind "What is this hype going on regarding Cambridge Analytica stuffs?". To keep it simple it all started with a whistle blower who goes by the name of Christopher Wylie. Reportedly he was the person behind the mass exposing of data breach by CA. He exposed the fact that his company had allegedly used Facebook users' data to help fixing 2016 US elections.

**What is exactly CAMBRIDGE ANALYTICA ?

According to Wikipedia, Cambridge Analytica (CA) is a British political consulting firm which combines data mining, data brokerage, and data analysis with strategic communication for the electoral process. The firm maintains offices in London, New York City, and Washington, D.C. 

These arre the key people of CA:

Alexander Nix (CEO)
Robert Mercer (investor)
Rebekah Mercer (investor)
Steve Bannon (vice president, former)

CA collects data on voters using sources such as demographics, consumer behaviour, internet activity, and other public and private sources. According to The Guardian, CA is using psychological data derived from millions of Facebook users, largely without users' permission or knowledge.

**Data Breach Explained:

Acoording to Wikipedia, CA derives much of its personality data on online surveys which it conducts on an ongoing basis. For each political client, the firm narrows voter segments from 32 different personality styles it attributes to every adult in the United States. The personality data informs the tone of the language used in ad messages or voter contact scripts, while additional data is used to determine voters' stances on particular issues.

The data gets updated with monthly surveys, asking about political preferences and how people get the information they use to make decisions. It also covers consumer topics about different brands and preferred products, building up an image of how someone shops as much as how they vote.

Cambridge Analytica, the data firm hired by Donald Trump’s campaign to build targeted ads during the 2016 US election, harvested data from 50 million Facebook users without their consent.  

New reports from the Guardian and New York Times reveal how a Trump-aligned data-gathering service called Cambridge Analytica "exploited" information from millions of people in the lead-up to the 2016 election. It was pretty simple: The firm created a personality test app called "thisisyourdigitallife," and people opted in to take it, granting the app permission to scrape their personal data in the process. It also harvested their friends' data. 

To put it simple, CA violated the Facebook's privacy policy to meticulously steal private information of masses and using it for fixing elections. They collected information through surveys conducted by web applications connected to Facebook which ultimately went on to be the real cause behind #deletefacebook campaigns all over social media(especially twitter).

**Tweets regarding #deletefacebook :

Tweets screenshot based on personal preference by simon.

1. DuckDuckGo:

 

2.

3.

Elon Musk at his best:

• Further updates on happenings of CA data breach will be updated.
  

• My thoughts on all topics regarding CA will be updated soon.

• Hope you enjoyed having a glance of what CA and #deletefacebook campaign meant for us as a whole.
  

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