50 Million Facebook Profiles Harvested for Cambridge Analytica in Major Data Breach

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Whistleblower Christopher Wylie has revealed that data analytics firm Cambridge Analytica is responsible for harvesting millions of Facebook profiles of US voters, which allowed the company to build a program that could predict and influence their choices. Facebook allegedly knew about the practice for two years but did nothing.

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. However, at the time it failed to alert users and took only limited steps to recover and secure the private information of more than 50 million individuals.
 
Scary Shit. This is why social media is awful and we as the tech community need to continue to preach the dangers of this crap... the average user is so ignorant to what is possible (including my wife).

Edit: Responsible useage; all are a great platform for communication - especially with friends who are overseas or across the country, but too many have been indoctrinated into believing what they see on this bullshit.
 
Scambridge Analticks and Farcebook, nice pairing.
 
Facebook is behaving like criminals, so charge them like criminals. Start from the top and work your way down. All orders come from the top. No deals because they have the bucks and support certain parties.
 
Honestly this is just more liberal propaganda aimed at trying to tear down the right wing in general. The bottom line is that Facebook executives donated millions directly to the democrats last election. Period. It is impossible to have supporters who are that compelled to donate vast sums, in positions of power, without bias getting injected into each and every decision they make in their lives and their daily job. Even if unintentional the bias shows through on the platform.

Russia, China, Cambridge...the left is looking anywhere they can to whine and blame for their loss in order to undermine the presidency, but the reality is that biased left wing media activism...instead of journalism...angered the people and they came out to vote.

It's really that simple.

You can't complain about Cambridge making an algorithm to try and influence voters when CNN is running 24/7 anti right headlines around the clock based on complete lies, no evidence and a political narrative. What the left is after here is to continue to play the manipulation game on their own terms, while blocking the other side from doing so.
 
Just another day in the Trump campaign/administration. America is going to need new regulations and give more authority to the FEC to bring future elections back to normal levels of corruption. These slap on the wrist punishments don't do anything besides to pacify the populace.
 
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Not really a data breach when they are contractually allowed to have the data for one method of use. Maybe a breach of contract that they used it for other purposes.
 
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This is why I was born in 1904 and studied at Ol' Shit Mouth University in Toots, Mississippi.
 
Not really a data breach when they are contractually allowed to have the data for one method of use. Maybe a breach of contract that they used it for other purposes.

This could easily be argued a data breach. Only 270,000 users consented to allowing their information be used in the study by Kogan. Kogan then took those 270,000 users' friends and data mined them for a whopping total of 50,000,000 facebook users data. None of those 49, 730,000 facebook users consented to this. And Cambridge Analytics claimed the data was destroyed but now several individuals have come forward to say the data is alive and well unencrypted on their servers. If this isn't a data breach, what is? And Facebook after finding out that Kogan gave the data to Cambridge did absolutely nothing about it until the article in The Observer came out. That is 2 years of knowing what happened.

And it is illegal for foreign citizens to participate in election work. The shit is getting deeper.
 
Just another day in the Trump campaign/administration. America is going to need new regulations and give more authority to the FEC to bring future elections back to normal levels of corruption. These slap on the wrist punishments don't do anything besides to pacify the populace.
EDIT: I stand corrected, thanks Chunder.
 
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This happened over two years ago during the Obama administration before Trump was elected, just fyi.

Instead of engaging in misplaced "whataboutism". You might want to read the article or one of the more up-to-date articles that came out after this one. Such as http://thehill.com/policy/technolog...ng-to-stop-undercover-report-on-its-practices . Robert Mueller is now looking to obtain this information in his investigation of Trump and members of his campaign.
 
Shitbook was founded by a thief so, it continues its toxic agenda. I really hope Trump and its administration cracks down on such bullshit in the US. EU fines its media outlets 500.000 Euros for spreading fake info.
 
This could easily be argued a data breach. Only 270,000 users consented to allowing their information be used in the study by Kogan. Kogan then took those 270,000 users' friends and data mined them for a whopping total of 50,000,000 facebook users data. None of those 49, 730,000 facebook users consented to this. And Cambridge Analytics claimed the data was destroyed but now several individuals have come forward to say the data is alive and well unencrypted on their servers. If this isn't a data breach, what is? And Facebook after finding out that Kogan gave the data to Cambridge did absolutely nothing about it until the article in The Observer came out. That is 2 years of knowing what happened.

And it is illegal for foreign citizens to participate in election work. The shit is getting deeper.

On the last point, you are dead wrong. After all, Elton John sang at Hillary Clinton fundraisers in 2008. Foreigners are also allowed to offer various services as long as they are not offered at some sort of discount that could be considered a donation.

And no, there was no data breach. While only 270k people directly agreed to data mining, their friends that had profiles with information set to public were also mined. Nobody had their private info taken without their legal consent. So those 49,970,000 other users did consent in an indirect way, legally speaking. When you post your info on a public social media site without specifically requesting you do not want that info shared, you can't complain that somebody is "stealing" your information. It's important that we have this conversation, so let's not just make stuff up because of your own political axe.

The Obama campaign itself was hailed as "data driven" and forward thinking for collecting big data to target individuals.

https://www.mediavillage.com/articl...r-obama-antony-young-mindshare-north-america/

"They used classic micro-targeting online advertising to reach those groups. Obama's team's use of Facebook this time was also very clever, tapping into Facebook's individual profile data. A million users downloaded the Obama 2012 app on Facebook. The app was able to identify their Facebook friends that fit favorable profiles located in key swing states, encouraging them to contact these friends to remind them to vote. Sources say one in five of those contacted this way were influenced positively by this contact."
 
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On the last point, you are dead wrong. After all, Elton John sang at Hillary Clinton fundraisers in 2008. Foreigners are also allowed to offer various services as long as they are not offered at some sort of discount that could be considered a donation.

And no, there was no data breach. While only 270k people directly agreed to data mining, their friends that had profiles with information set to public were also mined. Nobody had their private info taken without their legal consent. So those 49,970,000 other users did consent in an indirect way, legally speaking. When you post your info on a public social media site without specifically requesting you do not want that info shared, you can't complain that somebody is "stealing" your information. It's important that we have this conversation, so let's not just make stuff up because of your own political axe.

The Obama campaign itself was hailed as "data driven" and forward thinking for collecting big data to target individuals.

https://www.mediavillage.com/articl...r-obama-antony-young-mindshare-north-america/

"They used classic micro-targeting online advertising to reach those groups. Obama's team's use of Facebook this time was also very clever, tapping into Facebook's individual profile data. A million users downloaded the Obama 2012 app on Facebook. The app was able to identify their Facebook friends that fit favorable profiles located in key swing states, encouraging them to contact these friends to remind them to vote. Sources say one in five of those contacted this way were influenced positively by this contact."

https://www.fec.gov/updates/foreign-nationals/

It states that any contribution of value is prohibited under law. Furthermore, Kogan provided 50,000,000 profiles to Cambridge without being an employee of Cambridge and without Facebook's consent. There is all kinds of slippery slope here. The reason Cambridge was incorporated in Delaware was because a large portion of the employees were non US citizens nor green card holders.
 
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And Christopher Wylie gets banned from Facebook. They don't like whistleblowers.
 
On the last point, you are dead wrong. After all, Elton John sang at Hillary Clinton fundraisers in 2008. Foreigners are also allowed to offer various services as long as they are not offered at some sort of discount that could be considered a donation.

And no, there was no data breach. While only 270k people directly agreed to data mining, their friends that had profiles with information set to public were also mined. Nobody had their private info taken without their legal consent. So those 49,970,000 other users did consent in an indirect way, legally speaking. When you post your info on a public social media site without specifically requesting you do not want that info shared, you can't complain that somebody is "stealing" your information. It's important that we have this conversation, so let's not just make stuff up because of your own political axe.

The Obama campaign itself was hailed as "data driven" and forward thinking for collecting big data to target individuals.

https://www.mediavillage.com/articl...r-obama-antony-young-mindshare-north-america/

"They used classic micro-targeting online advertising to reach those groups. Obama's team's use of Facebook this time was also very clever, tapping into Facebook's individual profile data. A million users downloaded the Obama 2012 app on Facebook. The app was able to identify their Facebook friends that fit favorable profiles located in key swing states, encouraging them to contact these friends to remind them to vote. Sources say one in five of those contacted this way were influenced positively by this contact."

And btw Elton John has a US work visa.
 
Honestly this is just more liberal propaganda aimed at trying to tear down the right wing in general. The bottom line is that Facebook executives donated millions directly to the democrats last election. Period. It is impossible to have supporters who are that compelled to donate vast sums, in positions of power, without bias getting injected into each and every decision they make in their lives and their daily job. Even if unintentional the bias shows through on the platform.

Russia, China, Cambridge...the left is looking anywhere they can to whine and blame for their loss in order to undermine the presidency, but the reality is that biased left wing media activism...instead of journalism...angered the people and they came out to vote.

It's really that simple.

You can't complain about Cambridge making an algorithm to try and influence voters when CNN is running 24/7 anti right headlines around the clock based on complete lies, no evidence and a political narrative. What the left is after here is to continue to play the manipulation game on their own terms, while blocking the other side from doing so.

It's becoming clear social media companies, even as left leaning as they are, have no fucking clue how to handle news in the digital age. This is especially true when people like Alex Jones are trying to claim legitimacy of pushing conspiracy theories vs. actual, real, and researched news reported by prestigious outlets. When advertising is ran on each channel, guess which one that advertisers are going to pull money from? And being that these social media companies are private, they can pretty much do whatever they want, and they will mostly side with what effects their bottom line. It just so happens a lot of channels and media outlets pushing conspiracy theories happen to be right leaning. So they of course take this as an "attack" on right-wing ideology. Not to say there aren't conspiracy theories on the left, but there's almost no comparison for stuff like Alex Jones on the left.

The left isn't looking anywhere they can to whine about the loss. Hillary Clinton was a bad candidate, but it's not so black and white. There's now countless other factors we have to take into consideration that happened during the election. The ENTIRE U.S. intelligence agency confirms Russia played a central role in setting out to influence the 2016 election. This is the subject of (Republican) Robert Mueller's investigation. Who was hired by Deputy AG Rosenstein (Republican) under Jeff Sessions (Republican) nominated by Trump (Republican) and approved by a majority of Republicans. To call this a liberal conspiracy is utterly laughable. His investigation has produced indictments of Russians, ex-campaign staff of Trump (Flynn, Gates, Papadopulous, Manafort), and two others (Richard Pinedo and Alex van der Zwaan). The cloud around Russia remains. Why did so many lie about their contacts or encounters with Russia? Including those in the Trump campaign? This isn't a partisan investigation, an attack on our democracy by a foreign government is a VERY serious thing (and please don't whatabout that we meddled in other countries elections, it's wrong then, it's wrong now). Cambridge Analyitca, Social Media, bots, propaganda, all these may have played a roll in attempting to influence the election and even a year later we're still learning of the connection between all of it. This stuff takes time to unravel.

And your statement about CNN is false. While CNN does run heavily left-leaning, and I agree sometimes its programming can beat your over the head with anti-Trump sentiment, it still reports news and actually corrects itself when wrong, even going as far to fire journalists who get things wrong. Now compare that to the equivalent on the right, Fox News, which is currently being sued by Seth Rich's parents for pushing the conspiracy theory regarding their son, has paid out millions in sexual harassment allegations, pushed the false Pizzagate conspiracy theory, Birthirism, Obamacare Death Panels, the whole Benghazi stunt, and now this awful Deep State bullshit attacking the career men and women of law enforcement, not to mention the whole detestable attack of Parkland students who survived an assault at their school as "crisis actors". Fox News has literally become a safe space for conservatives, and the President. Liberal leaning people understand that one source isn't the end all be all to their news. They are more likely to view multiple sources in order to confirm an event (see: http://assets.pewresearch.org/wp-co.../2014/10/PJ_14.10.21_mediaPolarization-00.png). Look at the heavy skew of Fox News compared to people that lean or are mostly liberal.
 
Another nail in Facebook's coffin. Thank goodness.
 
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And people keep wondering why I'm not on Facebook....LOL I don't need all of my crap data-mined and tracked EVEN MORE than it already is!! Sheeple don't get that though. I already know that my info is out there, I just don't need it shoved in my face and twisted behind my back...
 
https://www.fec.gov/updates/foreign-nationals/

It states that any contribution of value is prohibited under law. Furthermore, Kogan provided 50,000,000 profiles to Cambridge without being an employee of Cambridge and without Facebook's consent. There is all kinds of slippery slope here. The reason Cambridge was incorporated in Delaware was because a large portion of the employees were non US citizens nor green card holders.

Read further. If that were the case, why did they decide that Elton John singing at Clinton Fundraisers was okay?

And the law you quote specifically details contributions. There are no laws forbidding a campaign from purchasing a service at market rates from a foreigner. Otherwise, this would make buying add space on a television network owned by people in a different country, who broadcast in the USA, illegal. A service paid for is not a contribution.

Also, Kogan may hav3 violated Facebook's terms of service, as did CA IF they indeed failed to delete all of the data. But none of the data was STOLEN. Everyone who had their data siphoned either agrees to it directly via the app or failed to set their profile to not allow it. This would be a civil issue between Facebook and the other parties involved, IF true. No private details, such as passwords or non public facing info was obtained.
 
It's becoming clear social media companies, even as left leaning as they are, have no fucking clue how to handle news in the digital age. This is especially true when people like Alex Jones are trying to claim legitimacy of pushing conspiracy theories vs. actual, real, and researched news reported by prestigious outlets. When advertising is ran on each channel, guess which one that advertisers are going to pull money from? And being that these social media companies are private, they can pretty much do whatever they want, and they will mostly side with what effects their bottom line. It just so happens a lot of channels and media outlets pushing conspiracy theories happen to be right leaning. So they of course take this as an "attack" on right-wing ideology. Not to say there aren't conspiracy theories on the left, but there's almost no comparison for stuff like Alex Jones on the left.

The left isn't looking anywhere they can to whine about the loss. Hillary Clinton was a bad candidate, but it's not so black and white. There's now countless other factors we have to take into consideration that happened during the election. The ENTIRE U.S. intelligence agency confirms Russia played a central role in setting out to influence the 2016 election. This is the subject of (Republican) Robert Mueller's investigation. Who was hired by Deputy AG Rosenstein (Republican) under Jeff Sessions (Republican) nominated by Trump (Republican) and approved by a majority of Republicans. To call this a liberal conspiracy is utterly laughable. His investigation has produced indictments of Russians, ex-campaign staff of Trump (Flynn, Gates, Papadopulous, Manafort), and two others (Richard Pinedo and Alex van der Zwaan). The cloud around Russia remains. Why did so many lie about their contacts or encounters with Russia? Including those in the Trump campaign? This isn't a partisan investigation, an attack on our democracy by a foreign government is a VERY serious thing (and please don't whatabout that we meddled in other countries elections, it's wrong then, it's wrong now). Cambridge Analyitca, Social Media, bots, propaganda, all these may have played a roll in attempting to influence the election and even a year later we're still learning of the connection between all of it. This stuff takes time to unravel.

And your statement about CNN is false. While CNN does run heavily left-leaning, and I agree sometimes its programming can beat your over the head with anti-Trump sentiment, it still reports news and actually corrects itself when wrong, even going as far to fire journalists who get things wrong. Now compare that to the equivalent on the right, Fox News, which is currently being sued by Seth Rich's parents for pushing the conspiracy theory regarding their son, has paid out millions in sexual harassment allegations, pushed the false Pizzagate conspiracy theory, Birthirism, Obamacare Death Panels, the whole Benghazi stunt, and now this awful Deep State bullshit attacking the career men and women of law enforcement, not to mention the whole detestable attack of Parkland students who survived an assault at their school as "crisis actors". Fox News has literally become a safe space for conservatives, and the President. Liberal leaning people understand that one source isn't the end all be all to their news. They are more likely to view multiple sources in order to confirm an event (see: http://assets.pewresearch.org/wp-co.../2014/10/PJ_14.10.21_mediaPolarization-00.png). Look at the heavy skew of Fox News compared to people that lean or are mostly liberal.
Fox News never lied about any of the issues that you described above. That would open them up to all sorts of litigation that I just don't see. They simply do the same thing that CNN, The New York Times, etc does with its conspiracies. They "discuss the controversy" using terms like "allegedly" or "some say," etc to get away with rampant rumor mongering. I don't really see how Fox News is doing anything different in that regard.


The biggest story that jumps to mind is the infamous, "17 intelligence agencies" claim that was made again and again and again in the left wing media that didn't get corrected for almost a year. They there is the fact that they lie by omission, failing to acknowledge, except once in a blue moon, that the FBI was never given access to DNC servers and was told to go by the report of a private company paid by the DNC. There're all sorts of ways to manipulate news without directly "lying," and this is what all news agencies do.

Facebook even had to remind the MSM that this affair with Cambridge Analytics was not a "leak" and that they (Facebook) retained legal privilege. The MSM seems to be reporting the story as if Wylie is somehow 100% correct. The MSM acts as judge, jury, and executioner.

And on top of all of that, the Russian facebook adds were literally a percentage of a percent of political adds during the campaign. Russian trolls have never made up a significant percentage of any Twitter hashtag, and Twitter did everything it could to get rid of the "#dncleaks" hashtag in order to protect Clinton.
 
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Read further. If that were the case, why did they decide that Elton John singing at Clinton Fundraisers was okay?

And the law you quote specifically details contributions. There are no laws forbidding a campaign from purchasing a service at market rates from a foreigner. Otherwise, this would make buying add space on a television network owned by people in a different country, who broadcast in the USA, illegal. A service paid for is not a contribution.

Also, Kogan may hav3 violated Facebook's terms of service, as did CA IF they indeed failed to delete all of the data. But none of the data was STOLEN. Everyone who had their data siphoned either agrees to it directly via the app or failed to set their profile to not allow it. This would be a civil issue between Facebook and the other parties involved, IF true. No private details, such as passwords or non public facing info was obtained.

Elton John is probably the worst way to defend your position. But ok.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.th...ge-analytica-non-american-employees-political
 
Fox News never lied about any of the issues that you described above. That would open them up to all sorts of litigation that I just don't see. They simply do the same thing that CNN, The New York Times, etc does with its conspiracies. They "discuss the controversy" using terms like "allegedly" or "some say," etc to get away with rampant rumor mongering. I don't really see how Fox News is doing anything different in that regard.


The biggest story that jumps to mind is the infamous, "17 intelligence agencies" claim that was made again and again and again in the left wing media that didn't get corrected for almost a year. They there is the fact that they lie by omission, failing to acknowledge, except once in a blue moon, that the FBI was never given access to DNC servers and was told to go by the report of a private company paid by the DNC. There're all sorts of ways to manipulate news without directly "lying," and this is what all news agencies do.

Facebook even had to remind the MSM that this affair with Cambridge Analytics was not a "leak" and that they (Facebook) retained legal privilege. The MSM seems to be reporting the story as if Wylie is somehow 100% correct. The MSM acts as judge, jury, and executioner.

And on top of all of that, the Russian facebook adds were literally a percentage of a percent of political adds during the campaign. Russian trolls have never made up a significant percentage of any Twitter hashtag, and Twitter did everything it could to get rid of the "#dncleaks" hashtag in order to protect Clinton.

Actually Fox News' Sean Hannity pushed a conspiracy theory that Seth Rich was killed by evil forces within the Democratic Party for leaking Clinton's emails. This is a ginormous lie is it not?
 
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