PLEC -1

Topic: Read this article about Cambridge Analytica in Wired Magazine. Discuss whether you think the premise of the article is correct and that people are more aware of privacy concerns.

Read and respond to below two student’s discussions. (150 words for each response) reflecting on your own experience, challenging assumptions, pointing out something new you learned, offering suggestions

#1. Posted by Varun

Introduction

The article stated how Cambridge Analytica, an information analysis firm sparked the privacy awakening in social media platforms. The firm involved in stealing data from Facebook, as a result, private information of American Facebook users is tracked and stolen for misusing in understanding people's psychology in 2016's election in America.

Discussion

At the age of digitalization, people prefer to store, transfer, and share personal and corporate information on various social media platforms. Facebook became a hot choice for all over the world, where it has a base in the USA. As much the people relying on the social media platforms and third parties, the chances of cyber security risks of the information are also raised and increasing day by day. Initially, Facebook didn't hold the strongest security measures for its information. At the same time, Facebook was linked with various third parties for the development of applications and other business purposes. Based on the research of Nytimes, (2018), “The idea was to map personality traits based on what people had liked on Facebook, and then use that information to target audiences with digital ads.” The article showed a data breach incident that happened to Facebook, where it claimed that a researcher of Facebook had collected personal information of Facebook users without their permission.

The articles showed the possible data security issues on the social media platforms and it can be an example of security flaws which may result in security vulnerabilities of the user information. Any social media platform may tie-up with various third party vendors for different services. According to Theguardian, (2018), “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”. The security issues of the information are maintained by definite policies of the companies, but if anyone violates the policies, it can't be visualized until any impact happens to the company. Similarly, a researcher Kogan had developed a third-party quiz app in the Facebook and extracted user's information through a loophole of the application. The violation of the policies was hidden until whistleblowing from Cambridge Analytica happened and claimed that that information is misused in the 2016 election of America. The incident highlighted the requirement of security and privacy concerns from both the user and the company side.

According to Wired, (2019), “Zuckerberg was called to testify before Congress, and a year of contentious international debates about the privacy rights of consumers online commenced.” Similarly, the article on that specific incident showed that people are not concerned about their personal information, and they should be awake enough about their information submitted in social media platform and accessed in third party sites or applications. Along with the change of time, people became more reliable on various social media and third parties for storing and handling their information and doesn't concerned about information security and privacy. Attackers become more active as they found a lucrative purpose on exploiting individual information through a data breach, hackings, and lots more. That shows that people are not awakening enough about their information and rely on third-party service providers for keeping their information safe and secure.

Conclusion

The article on Cambridge Analytica shows how personal information on social media users can be exploited or stole due to third party access. After this incident, Facebook had taken lots of initiatives such as end-to-end encryption for security aspects. Similarly, users or people also need to aware enough about their informati

#2. Posted by Ashok

I personally think that privacy is an important thing for any individual. One should not influence others over their thoughts or priorities. Now-a-days the scandals that involve the privacy and the personal information of the people are increasing at a high range. It is illegal to sell the content of an individual to other companies. From this article I understood that it is done by an individual who works in Facebook and not the entire company. But the company should have taken necessary precautions in order not to let the employees to do so. “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”― Benjamin Franklin.

People have no idea of what information of theirs is being collected and how they are being influenced. It is all because of lack of awareness among people about privacy. “All human beings have three lives: public, private, and secret”. They should be educated about these privacy concerns. Necessary training camps should be established to do so.

A massive amount of people’s personal information, their thoughts, and interests will be gathered by social networking services. There are some major concerns of privacy by the use of social networking services. Some of them are: A compromised account on the social media is an easy target for the hackers and other cyber criminals. A lot of people are being harassed though the social media services. There are a lot of cyber security issues. There are cases in which individuals are asked to login via social networking services so that their personal and confidential data can be easily gathered. There is a thin line between good marketing and privacy concerns which is diminishing now-a-days. Many social networks use your location for various reasons. Even this causes privacy concerns as you may easily get tracked. “Friends don’t spy; true friendship is about privacy, too.”― Stephen King.