Facebook under fire for mass leak of users’ private data

More than 300,000 Australians among those affected.

Facebook is facing international investigations into the illicit harvesting of users’ personal data. The information was collected by Cambridge Analytica (CA), a political consulting firm that was used by President Trump’s 2016 election campaign and is linked with the Brexit ‘ Vote Leave’ campaign. According to a whistleblower, CA gathered data from 50 million users (an initial estimate), then developed a software program that profiled these citizens to predict voting patterns — and, through micro-targeted ads, influence voting decisions.

The data was obtained via a third-party app in 2013, ‘thisisyourdigitallife’, that participants willingly signed up for and thus gave up permissions. But it then pulled the personal data of these users’ Facebook friends without their consent, vastly increasing the data pool from the initial 200,000 users. Facebook altered its platform the following year, blocking this kind of loophole, and when it became aware of Cambridge Analytica’s breach in 2015, Facebook apparently ordered it to delete the data. Mark Zuckerberg has since made a statement promising to investigate all apps that had this kind of access prior to the 2014 overhaul and ‘fix’ users privacy concerns. As a result, the social media platform has made its privacy settings more transparent and easily accessible and the ability to remove Facebook account information from third-party apps has been streamlined.

It has since been claimed in a statement from Facebook that the total number of individuals whose data was accessed was closer to the 87 million mark — although CA has denied that new figure, stating that it only collected the information of 30 million individuals. According to Facebook, users from countries such as the Philippines, Indonesia, India, Mexico and the UK were part of the data haul. Australia itself was affected as well, although its 300,000 users only comprised 0.4% of the overall 87 million, of which the US made up the vast majority at 81.4%. Shortly after the figures were revealed, Mark Zuckerberg admitted during a conference call that Facebook “...didn’t take a broad enough view on what their responsibility was and that was a huge mistake. That was my mistake.”