Big tech loves your data, every time you open a new account on that trendy new website, they ask for your name, email address and sometimes even your phone number and you don’t give it a second thought. Well, you should probably should care about that data a bit more like how you protect personal information.
You give them this data after all don’t you?
We can all agree there is nothing clandestine about the fact big tech collects data from you. However, what is not frequently talked about enough is about the many ways in which this data can be manipulated to be used against you and which third parties have access to this data. An example when user data has been used for nefarious reasons was: The Facebook and Cambridge Analytica scandal. This whole affair showed how Cambridge Analytica was able to weaponize user data (with Facebooks assistance) to influence elections around the world from the Brexit campaign to the 2016 US presidential elections. During the 2016 presidential election, Cambridge analytical Exploited Facebook Data of Millions to create psychographic profiles of Facebook users by using their activities on Facebook to create profiles for people. The Cambridge Analytica team did their targeting by deciding who in their eyes were trump supporters or potential swing voters, because of this they were able to target American voters with very specific tailored messages about republican nominees. But first we must ask how this information was obtained by Cambridge Analytica: Facebook claims that it was not breached and that its service was designed to do exactly what it did, but that it was not used for its intended purpose. Which is not surprising because no one want to take blame for a serious breach of user’s trust. I decided to take a closer look at Facebook’s data policy, some of the data that Facebook openly says it collects include: location, apps being used while Facebook is on, cookie data etc. . Nothing about the data Facebook says it collects sticks out to me, but this still raises questions like how was Cambridge Analytica able to weaponize user data so much? and I am afraid that we may never know the answer to that question except if some unprecedented leak is to occur within Facebook.
OOPS they lost it
When comparing Facebook’s data policy to other companies one thing that was pretty common was their claim that they take data privacy very seriously and are continuing to comply with data protection law. We can all agree that this very mush B.S, because every month it seems that this different company has been the victim to another data breach, for example on April 3rd 2021 hackers posted a database of over 533M Facebook users' personal information online for free. Information that was compromised in this data breach include: phone numbers, Facebook IDs, names, birthdays, and some email addresses. This was especially devastating because it meant that the victims of this hack are more vulnerable to social engineering attacks in the future. Also, it was reported in April that based on leaks from insider information Facebook Doesn’t Know Facebook that they don’t know because of it’s open border policy. The way Facebook manages user data is very worrying because this means that people are at greater risk of different types of fraud in the future.
Conclusion
BIG TECH is not gong anyway; it is not one day just going to disappear, honestly the opposite is more likely to happen were BIG TCEH becomes a more prominent part of our lives. However, the best advice I can currently give you is that you read the terms and conditions properly and that you only allow them access to the necessary information.
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