#thisisyourdigitallife

[ailtrahq]

In an increasingly AI-driven world, blockchain could play a critical role in preventing the sins committed by Apps like Facebook from becoming widespread and normalized.Artificial intelligence platforms such as ChatGPT and Google’s Bard have entered the mainstream and have already been accused of inflaming the political divide with their biases. As foretold in popular films such as , and most recently, , it’s already become evident that AI is a wild animal we’ll likely struggle to tame.From democracy-killing disinformation campaigns and killer drones to the total destruction of individual Privacy, AI can potentially transform the global economy and likely civilization itself. In May 2023, global tech leaders penned an open letter that made Headlines, warning that the dangers of AI Technology may be on par with nuclear weapons.One of the most significant fears of AI is the lack of transparency surrounding its training and programming, particularly in Deep Learning models that can be difficult to expropriate. Because sensitive data is used to train AI models, they can be manipulable if the data becomes compromised. In the years ahead, blockchain will be widely utilized alongside AI to enhance the transparency, accountability and audibility concerning its decision-making process.Chat GPT will make fun of Jesus but not Muhammad pic.twitter.com/LzMXBcdCmw— E (@ElijahSchaffer) September 2, 2023 For instance, when training an AI model using data stored on a Blockchain, the data’s provenance and integrity can be ensured, preventing unauthorized modifications. Stakeholders can track and verify the decision-making process by recording the model’s training parameters, Updates and validation results on the Blockchain.With this use case, blockchain will play a leading role in preventing the unintentional misuse of AI. But what about the intentional? That’s a much more dangerous scenario, which, unfortunately, we’ll likely face in the coming years. Even without AI, centralized Big Tech has historically aided and abetted behavior that profits by manipulating both individuals and democratic values to the highest bidder, as made famous in Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica scandal. In 2014, the “Thisisyourdigitallife” app offered to pay users for personality tests, which required permission to access their Facebook profiles and those of their friends. Essentially, Facebook allowed Cambridge Analytica to spy on users without permission. The result? Two historic mass-targeted psychological public relations campaigns that had a relatively strong influence on both the outcomes of the United States presidential election and the United Kingdom’s European Union membership referendum in 2016. Has Meta (previously Facebook) learned from its mistakes? It doesn’t look like it.In July, Meta unveiled its latest app, Threads. Touted as a rival to Elon Musk’s Twitter, it harvests the usual data Facebook and Instagram collect. But — similar to TikTok — when Threads users signed up, they unwittingly gave Meta access to GPS location, camera, photos, IP Information, device type and device signals. It’s a standard practice of Web2 to justify such practices, touting that “users agreed to the terms and conditions.” In reality, it would take an average of 76 working days to read every Privacy policy for each app used by a standard internet user. The point? Meta now has access to almost everything on the phones of over 150 million users.In comes AI. If the after-effects of the Cambridge Analytica scandal warranted concerns, can we even begin to comprehend the impacts of a marriage between this invasive surveillance and the godlike intelligence of AI? The unsurprising remedy here is Blockchain, but the solution isn’t as straightforward.One of the main dangers of AI rests in the data it can collect and then weaponize. Regarding social media, blockchain technology can potentially enhance data Privacy and control, which could help mitigate Big Tech’s data harvesting practices.

However, it’s unlikely to “stop” Big Tech from taking sensitive data.To truly Safeguard against the intentional dangers of AI and ward off future Cambridge Analytica-like scenarios, decentralized, preferably Blockchain-based, social media platforms are required. By design, they reduce the concentration of user data in one central entity, minimizing the potential for mass surveillance and AI disinformation campaigns. Put simply, through Blockchain Technology, we already have the tools needed to Safeguard our independence from AI at both the individual and national levels. Shortly after signing the open letter to governments on the dangers of AI in May, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman published a blog post proposing several strategies for responsible management of powerful AI systems. They involved collaboration among the major AI developers, greater technical study of large language models and establishing a global organization for AI Safety. While these measures make a good start, they fail to address the systems that make us vulnerable to AI — namely, the centralized Web2 entities such as Meta. To truly Safeguard against AI, more development is urgently required toward the rollout of Blockchain-based technologies, namely in Cybersecurity, and for a genuinely competitive ecosystem of decentralized social media Apps. Callum Kennard is the content manager at Storm Partners, a Web3 solutions provider based in Switzerland. He’s a graduate of the University of Brighton in England.

[advocathelp]

КАК FACEBOOK СТАЛ ЖЕРТВОЙ МОШЕННИЧЕСТВА?

Facebook и Cambridge Analytica оказались в центре громкого скандала, который раскрылся в 2018 году. Компания Cambridge Analytica незаконно собрала информацию о более чем 87 миллионах пользователей Facebook без их согласия и использовала эту информацию для создания персонализированных политических рекламных кампаний. В результате этих действий возникла огромная волна критики в адрес обеих компаний со стороны общественности, правительственных органов и инвесторов.

Что собой представляет компания Cambridge Analytica

Cambridge Analytica – это британская консалтинговая компания, которая была создана в 2013 году. Её главная специализация – анализ данных, а также работа с данными в рамках политических кампаний. Благодаря своим технологиям и методам анализа данных, компания быстро стала очень популярной среди политических кампаний разных стран.

Одной из самых известных кампаний, с которой работала Cambridge Analytica, была предвыборная кампания Дональда Трампа в 2016 году. Согласно отчёту The Guardian, компания смогла собрать данные более чем 50 миллионов пользователей Facebook без их согласия, используя взломанный аккаунт приложения «thisisyourdigitallife».

Огромный резонанс получил этот скандал. Он привёл к возбуждению уголовных дел и широкой кампании протестов. Однако многие эксперты считают, что Cambridge Analytica – это только вершина айсберга и многие другие компании и организации продолжают собирать и использовать личные данные пользователей в интересах различных групп и кампаний.

Как отреагировал Facebook на утечку информации Facebook выступил с заявлением о том, что Cambridge Analytica смогла получить доступ к данным пользователей через приложение для опросов. В рамках сотрудничества с университетом Кембридж, оно было предоставлено Cambridge Analytica для исследований, однако последняя нарушила условия использования данных.

По словам Facebook, они сразу же обнаружили эту уязвимость в 2015 году и устранили ее, а также запросили, чтобы Cambridge Analytica удалена полученные данные. Однако, согласно заявлению компании, они не могли подтвердить удаление этих данных, так как у Cambridge Analytica не было соответствующих сертификатов.

После скандала Facebook заявил, что улучшит политику конфиденциальности и усилит меры безопасности в отношении пользовательских данных. Они также запустили инструмент "Как это работает", который объясняет, как Facebook использует данные пользователей и как пользователи могут управлять своей конфиденциальностью.

Тем не менее, после этого скандала Facebook стал сталкиваться с рядом расследований и судебных исков в различных странах. В 2018 году Европейский союз ввел новые правила, известные как Общее регулирование о защите данных (GDPR), которые ужесточили требования к компаниям, работающим с персональными данными граждан ЕС.

Что говорят информаторы?

Один из информаторов, Кристофер Уайли, являвшийся бывшим сотрудником банка, что в 2018 году компания собирала данные о миллионах пользователей Facebook, используя приложение для опросов, созданное университетом Кембридж. Это приложение собирало данные не только пользователей, которые его использовали, но и их друзей. Таким образом, Cambridge Analytica получила доступ к данным о миллионах пользователей, без их согласия.

Другой информатор, штатный сотрудник Facebook Сэнди Парац, сообщил о том, что Facebook уже в 2014 году знал о том, что Cambridge Analytica собирает данные о пользователях. Facebook отказался открыто заявлять об этом и не предпринял достаточных мер для защиты данных пользователей.

[learningsimplify]

Control Privacy: The Key Between Social Networks And Users

If you use social networking services such as Facebook, you should know that many of the habits and small details of personal and daily life is information that is stored somewhere. Everything we publish about family, friends, education, politics, travel habits, taste in clothes, connection with a specific type of device, is the raw material that can be analyzed by a third party to determine some future behavior of ours. Read the full article

[dragoni]

Background refresher - connecting the dots. 

Robert Mercer founded Cambridge Analytica and funded Trump’s campaign. His daughter Rebekah now owns and runs Breitbart.

The Mercer family is helping to pay Trump’s legal fees for Mueller’s Russia investigation

Steve Bannon was a Cambridge Analytica Board Member and became Trump’s key adviser

Now what?

Will  the Justice Department prosecute Cambridge Analytica for Cybercrime? Jeff Sessions was key to Trump’s campaign. "Mr. Magoo” just fired Andrew McCabe, FBI Deputy Director!

Will the Republican controlled Congress call for an investigation? The Republican controlled House Intelligence Committee killed the investigation into Russia Interference into the 2016 election

Brad Parscale is Trump’s Digital Marketing Strategist and Facebook specialist. Trump name him as campaign manager for his 2020 reelection. Mueller, did Parscale coordinate his ads with Russian trolls?

Facebook and Zuckerberg have a LOT of explaining to do #FacebookComplicit

The Guardian reported Saturday.

Facebook suspended the firm from its platform on Friday, saying Cambridge Analytica lied about deleting the unauthorized information when it was first caught in 2015.

President Donald Trump's campaign hired Cambridge to target voters with personalized political ads - psychological warfare

Whistleblower —  Christopher Wylie, a former employee at Cambridge Analytica

"We exploited Facebook to harvest millions of people's profiles. And built models to exploit what we knew about them and target their inner demons. That was the basis that the entire company was built on."

In 2014, Wylie reached out to Aleksandr Kogan, a Russian-American who was then a professor of psychology at the University of Cambridge in the UK. Kogan had developed a personality prediction app called "thisisyourdigitallife" that compiled personal information from people based on what they liked on Facebook.

Through his company, Global Science Research, Kogan and Cambridge Analytica paid roughly 270,000 people to download the app and take a personality test, per the Guardian report.

The demo helped Cambridge Analytica compile information not only from the users who took part in Kogan's research, but from their friends' profiles as well, exposing millions of users' data. Each person who downloaded the app only needed to have about 185 friends on Facebook for Cambridge to access the 50 million users.

Kogan's app compiled psychographic profiles of users that analyzed a variety of characteristics and personality traits, including openness, conscientiousness, agreeableness, IQ, gender, age, political views, and religion. It also evaluated people's "sensational interests," which were divided into five categories:

"militarism" — guns and shooting, martial arts, crossbows, and knives

"violent occultism" — drugs, black magic, paganism

"intellectual activities" — singing and making music, foreign travel, the environment

"credulousness" — the paranormal, flying saucers

"wholesome interests" — camping, gardening, hill-walking

At the time, Kogan told Facebook he was collecting the information solely for academic purposes, but he did not reveal that his research would be handed over to Cambridge to use in political campaigns.

In a statement on Friday, Facebook said Kogan "lied to us and violated our Platform Policies by passing data from an app that was using Facebook Login to SCL/Cambridge Analytica, a firm that does political, government and military work around the globe."

[noticiassoltas]

Facebook pode ter acedido a dados de mais de 63 mil portugueses

Facebook pode ter acedido a dados de mais de 63 mil portugueses

A consultora britânica Cambridge Analytica pode ter acedido a dados de cerca de 63.080 utilizadores do Facebook em Portugal, de acordo com fonte oficial da rede social norte-americana. Em dados partilhados pela empresa, o Facebook confirma que o número de utilizadores que descarregaram a aplicação que terá obtido os dados, a “thisisyourdigitallife”, em Portugal rondou os 15. O número de…

[emmarahilly]

Week 5: How the Cambridge Analytic scandal is a perfect example of using digital citizenship for political purposes.

Firstly, what is digital citizenship? Well, the use “of social media in the everyday lives of citizens fosters the development of digital citizenship” (Vromen 2017).  This means that due to advancements in technology and the digitalisation of our world today, everyone online is considered a digital citizen as public platforms and social media allow us to network, to discuss, to communicate and form ideas and opinions that affect how everyone lives their lives offline. Social media can even affect political elections as it is “an effective channel for voter activation, discussions with constituents, sharing of information and political views” (Nelimarkka et al, 2020). This idea of a digital citizen and how it can actually majorly affect politics was exploited by a company, Cambridge Analytica. Cambridge Analytica was a digital data collection company that would sell data to businesses in order for them to get a better understanding of their audience.

However, Cambridge Analytica recognised the large mediatisation of social media, meaning “the process whereby society to an increasing degree is submitted to, or becomes dependent on, the media and their logic” (Hjarvard, 2008), and used this to help win the 2016 US election that put Donald Trump into office. The data company breached the privacy of many Facebook users by harvesting the over 50 million American Facebook accounts and using their personal information to advocate and promote Trump and his policies. Cambridge Analytica paid over 270,000 Facebook users to fill out a quiz “thisisyourdigitallife”, whilst also gaining data from these users Facebook friends, resulting in a giant amount of data. This data allowed Cambridge Analytica to have insight into these American’s interests, what they supported, and other personal information that they then used to specifically target these users into unknowingly be persuaded into voting for Trump. Content was shown in the Facebook feeds of these people that would depict Trump and his representatives in an agreeing stance to what the user personally thought due to Cambridge having access to what these users did in fact agree and disagree with. Therefore, these users would consume these promotional advertisements/election campaign posts and act by voting for Trump, when otherwise if not been exposed to that content, would not have voted for him or not voted at all. This clearly displays how Cambridge Analytica took advantage of the digital citizenship people now have and used it to win a political election.

References:

Gilbert, AM, Ben 2018, Facebook understood how dangerous the Trump-linked data firm Cambridge Analytica could be much earlier than it previously said. Here’s everything that’s happened up until now., Business Insider Australia.

‌Osborne, H 2018, What is Cambridge Analytica? The firm at the centre of Facebook’s data breach, the Guardian, The Guardian.

‌Stig Hjarvard & Ib Bondebjerg 2008, The mediatization of religion, Intellect.

‌

[allthebrazilianpolitics]

Brazil fines Facebook $1.6 million for improper sharing of user data

Brazil’s Ministry of Justice said on Monday it has fined U.S. tech giant Facebook Inc 6.6 million reais ($1.6 million) for improperly sharing user data.

The ministry’s department of consumer protection said it had found that data from 443,000 Facebook users was made improperly available to developers of an App called ‘thisisyourdigitallife.’

The ministry said the world’s largest social network failed to provide users with adequate information regarding default privacy settings, particularly related to data of “friends” and “friends of friends.”

The ministry said it launched the investigation following media reports of the misuse of data by political consultancy firm Cambridge Analytica in 2018.

Continue reading.

[indigobleu9]

So Facebook snitched on one of the profiles on my friends list saying that they used this app. #facebook #snitchesgetstitches #cambridgeanalytica #thisisyourdigitallife

[sectrakul]

Can we really trust the people who collect our data, even there is a legit policy?

While I was scrolling through my Facebook feed, there was a post about the penalty of $5 billion fine that Facebook has to pay. I was so shocked about the amount of money because the website reports that this is the highest amount of fine with a private company in history. 

After I read through the report and thought about it for a couple of minutes. This made me feel kind of worry about our privacy and security of our personal data, even there is a law or legal commitment that person who collects this data would not use it in a risky way. So I would elaborate my thought and mention about my opinion on this issue.

In 2017, there were several rumors saying that Donald Trump had used the data of 50 millions accounts of the Facebook user in his election campaign. The biggest question was ‘How could he has access to all those enormous amounts of data?’. Several months later, the truth was revealed about how could all of those data had been used without asking for permission of the owners.

Briefly speaking, there was an academic professor creating a mobile application named ‘thisisyourdigitallife’. This application became very popular among people in the USA and requires a Facebook account to sign-in into the application.

This means that this professor can have access to all the information of the user using his application through the Facebook account. Additionally, Facebook API regulation about the permission to access user information at that time allow an application developer to access all information of account in that user’s friend-list as well. Imagine you are using this application and have 500 friends on friend-list, all of their data can be accessed.

The problem of this issue has started from here, he sold all of the data to a British data-driven company, Cambridge Analytica (CA). Facebook instantly contacted this company after they knew what happen and told CA to delete all of them. Although there was a legal contract about this action, CA still did not delete it. Finally, Donal Trump hired CA to analyze data and perform microtargeting for Trump’s election campaign. After 2 years of investigating this case, these consequences ended with $5 billion fine on the Facebook side.

My opinion

The point I would like to make here is about the security of what happens here. 

Firstly, even there is a regulation that the professor could not use this data for personal profit, he still broke the rules.

Secondly, even Facebook told Cambridge Analytica to delete all the data, they decided not to do it.

These 2 situations above were done legally, but the problem still happened. So how could we trust any services that have access to our personal information? maybe not at all. As Richard said, security can’t rely on trust. Even there is an obvious law or legal contract, people still be able to break it anyway.

[digitalimpact]

Cambridge Analytica: quando i social influenzano la politica

La nostra vita sociale, di giorno in giorno, è sempre più riflessa nei nostri profili digitali e nelle nostre azioni quotidiane online. Dimostriamo pubblicamente, e spesso senza accorgercene, molti dei nostri interessi negli ambiti più disparati, anche se delicati o “privati”: e se tutto questo venisse sfruttato per scopi illegittimi? È il caso di Facebook e del suo coinvolgimento nelle Elezioni Presidenziali Statunitensi del 2016.

Partiamo qualche anno indietro, nel 2014: la società Cambridge Analytica (fondata da circa un anno dal miliardario conservatore Robert Mercer) si occupa della gestione e distribuzione di dati provenienti dai social network, e attraverso una serie di algoritmi specifici riesce a creare dei profili “comportamentali” degli utenti coinvolti. Secondo uno dei suoi dipendenti, servono circa 300 “Mi Piace” perché si conoscano gli interessi di qualcuno meglio del suo partner.

Cambridge Anaytica e Facebook | Fonte: Pixabay

 Nello stesso anno, il ricercatore di Cambridge Aleksandr Kogan realizza l’app “thisisyourdigitallife”, che permette all’utilizzatore di creare il proprio profilo psicologico attraverso una serie di attività online. All’applicazione si ha accesso attraverso il classico Login con Facebook, senza dover creare delle nuove credenziali, e, secondo le normative di allora, questo permetteva di raccogliere dati sia sulle persone loggate, sia sui loro “amici” online: Kogan ottiene, dunque, un database estesissimo sulle abitudini degli utenti, stimato intorno ai 50 milioni di profili coinvolti. 

Tutto lecito e legalissimo, finché Kogan non condivide tale archivio proprio con Cambridge Analytica (in circostanze poco chiare), essendo vietato ai proprietari di app di distribuire dati a società terze. Facebook reagisce tardivamente, bloccando i profili delle due aziende, ma lo scandalo peggiore arriva due anni più tardi.

Nel 2016, a pochi mesi dalle elezioni statunitensi, il comitato di Donald Trump ingaggia Cambridge Analytica come gestore dei dati per la campagna elettorale. Contemporaneamente, una enorme quantità di “bot” (profili falsi gestiti da computer) inonda le pagine, le dirette e i post di Facebook diffondendo informazioni false e gonfiate sulla rivale Hilary Clinton, influenzando e cambiando le opinioni degli interessati e creando molta disinformazione. 

Sfida elettorale Trump-Clinton | Fonte: Wikimedia Commons

Di tale azione viene accusata proprio l’azienda di Mercer, anche grazie la testimonianza dell’ex dipendente Christopher Wylie: attraverso l’uso del database citato poco fa, sono stati in grado di organizzare un’azione mediatica incredibilmente ampia e mirata, senza che gli utenti sapessero o sospettassero di niente. Il tutto utilizzando database vastissimo e ottenuto violando le normative Facebook, e che a quanto pare è stato anche fornito alla Russia di Putin, che aveva tutti gli interessi di ostacolare l’elezione della Clinton.

Lo scandalo è stato portato alla luce solo nei primi mesi del 2018, in un periodo storico in cui cresce fortemente il sospetto che la nostra privacy online non è sicura: la facilità con cui tali dati sono stati raccolti e riutilizzati illegalmente, all’insaputa degli utenti, è disarmante, e ci fa sempre più riflettere sull’importanza di gestire con accuratezza tutto ciò che riveliamo al web di noi stessi.

Luca Abatianni

[kingjaffejoffer]

What happened in the undercover operation?

In an explosive expose broadcast by Britain's Channel 4 News on Monday, senior executives at Cambridge Analytica, including its CEO Alexander Nix, were caught on camera suggesting the firm could use sex workers, bribes and misinformation in order to try and help political candidates win votes around the world.

Cambridge Analytica, however, has claimed that the reporters tricked the company, and that it never had any intention of carrying out the scenarios discussed.

The news channel's reporter posed as a representative of a wealthy Sri Lankan family looking to gain political standing. While executives initially denied they used "entrapment," after several meetings with the reporter, they put forward some tactics they could use.

How did this initially come to light?

The Channel 4 News investigation, broadcast Monday, followed articles published over the weekend by the New York Times and U.K. newspaper The Observer. The reports sought to outline how the data of millions of Facebook profiles ended up being given to Cambridge Analytica.

Academic Aleksandr Kogan and his company Global Science Research created an app called "thisisyourdigitallife" in 2014. Users were paid to take a psychological test and the app collected the data. It also gathered data on a person's Facebook friends, according to the reports.

In this way, 50 million Facebook profiles were mined for data. Kogan then shared this with Cambridge Analytica, which allowed the firm to build a software solution to help influence choices in elections, according to whistleblower Christopher Wylie, who revealed the alleged practices to both newspapers.

Wylie claimed the data sold to Cambridge Analytica was then used to develop "psychographic" profiles of people and deliver pro-Trump material to them online.

Cambridge Analytica has denied any of this data was used in connection to the Trump campaign.

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/21/facebook-cambridge-analytica-scandal-everything-you-need-to-know.html

https://www.sfgate.com/entertainment/the-wrap/article/facebook-stole-data-stocks-Cambridge-Analytica-12768138.php?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter

[justsomeantifas]

SAN FRANCISCO -- Facebook is suspending the Trump-affiliated data analytics firm Cambridge Analytica, after learning that it failed to delete data that it had taken inappropriately from users of the social network, Facebook said late Friday.

Facebook said it was suspending the accounts of Strategic Communication Laboratories, the parent company of Cambridge Analytica, as well as the accounts of a University of Cambridge psychologist Aleksandr Kogan, and Christopher Wylie of Eunoia Technologies.

Cambridge Analytica, a firm specializing in using online data to create voter personality profiles in order to target them with political messages, ran data operations for Trump's presidential campaign. The company was funded by Trump supporter and hedge fund billionaire Robert Mercer, and former Trump senior adviser Stephen K. Bannon once sat on its board. The company, which began working for the Trump campaign in June 2016, promised that its so-called "psychographic" profiles could predict the personality and political leanings of every adult in the United States.

The analytics firm was asked in December to turn over internal documents to Special Counsel Robert Mueller, as part of the investigation into collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia during the 2016 election.

Facebook said that Kogan had requested and gained access to information from 270,000 Facebook members after they chose to download his app. The app, “thisisyourdigitallife,” offered a personality prediction, and billed itself on Facebook as “a research app used by psychologists.”

The Facebook members gave their consent for Kogan to access information such as the city they set on their profile, the content they had liked, as well as some limited information about friend groups and contacts. Kogan then broke Facebook's policies and passed the information to Cambridge and to Wylie. Facebook learned about Kogan's activities in 2015.

The company removed Kogan's app at the time and demanded certifications from Kogan and Cambridge, and Wylie, that the information he had shared had been destroyed. Cambridge Analytica, Kogan and Wylie all certified to Facebook that they had done so. But Facebook said it received reports several days ago that the data was not deleted.

“We are moving aggressively to determine the accuracy of these claims,” the company said. “If true, this is another unacceptable violation of trust and the commitments they made. We are suspending SCL/Cambridge Analytica, Wylie and Kogan from Facebook, pending further information.”

Cambridge Analytica did not respond to immediate requests for comment.

The company's methods of data collections have been criticized by other researchers. “Cambridge Analytica overstates their capabilities because they play in the shadows. They willingly cheat and ignore privacy rules and data ethics in order to win,”" said social media analyst Jonathan Albright, research director of the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University.

Facebook is under significant pressure to control and be more transparent about how political operatives use its platform. Russian agents abused the company’s systems to target millions of American voters with disinformation during the 2016 election.

The Trump campaign also made heavy use of Facebook, and the social network faced criticism for sending Facebook staff to embed with campaign staffers. Facebook said this was standard practice for large political and corporate spenders.

[maaarine]

Revealed: 50 million Facebook profiles harvested for Cambridge Analytica in major data breach (The Guardian, Mar 17 2018)

Carole Cadwalladr, Emma Graham-Harrison:

“A whistleblower has revealed to the Observer how Cambridge Analytica – a company owned by the hedge fund billionaire Robert Mercer, and headed at the time by Trump’s key adviser Steve Bannon –

used personal information taken without authorisation in early 2014 to build a system that could profile individual US voters, in order to target them with personalised political advertisements.

Christopher Wylie, who worked with a Cambridge University academic to obtain the data, told the Observer:

“We exploited Facebook to harvest millions of people’s profiles. And built models to exploit what we knew about them and target their inner demons. That was the basis the entire company was built on.” (...)

The data was collected through an app called thisisyourdigitallife, built by academic Aleksandr Kogan, separately from his work at Cambridge University.

Through his company Global Science Research (GSR), in collaboration with Cambridge Analytica, hundreds of thousands of users were paid to take a personality test and agreed to have their data collected for academic use.

However, the app also collected the information of the test-takers’ Facebook friends, leading to the accumulation of a data pool tens of millions-strong.”

[bbcbreakingnews]

FIR against Cambridge Analytica for illegal data harvesting

Almost 30 months after it started a probe against Cambridge Analytica on the complaint of IT ministry, the CBI has filed an FIR against the UK firm and another firm Global Science Research on charges of illegally harvesting data of 5.6 lakh people. App founder named accused in CBI FIR The aim of illegally harvesting data of 5.6 lakh Indians by CA and GSR was to possibly profile them and influence polls. CBI says its inquiry had revealed that GSR illegally obtained datasets and passed them on to CA for commercial gains. It found that the accused harvested data of 335 Indian users and through these accounts they managed to get the data of their 5.62 lakh ‘friends’ through an app called ‘thisisyourdigitallife’. There is a political dimension to the case as BJP had accused Congress of using CA as part of its poll strategy. Law minister Ravi Shankar Prasad had warned social media firms against “interfering” in Indian polls. App founder Alexander Kogan has also been named as accused in the FIR and so has CA’s Alexander Nix. The data collected included demographic information, pages liked on FB etc. CBI says their probe had revealed that Facebook had collected written certificates from both the firms in 2016-17 declaring that the data they had collected through the app was accounted for and had been destroyed. “While this confirms that they had collected the data, it has not been established that it was destroyed,” it said. CBI said it had contacted the 335 users who were the primary downloaders of the app and six of them responded and recorded their statements unanimously stating that they were unaware that their and their friends’ data had been harvested. Cambridge Analytica had come under fire in 2018 in major data break controversy.

source https://bbcbreakingnews.com/2021/01/23/fir-against-cambridge-analytica-for-illegal-data-harvesting/

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CBI registers case against Cambridge Analytica for illegal data harvesting

The CBI has booked UK-based Cambridge Analytica and Global Science Research Ltd for illegally harvesting data of Facebook users in India for commercial purposes, officials said on Friday.

The action came after a preliminary enquiry into the matter which showed that Global Science Research had created an app "thisisyourdigitallife" which was authorised by Facebook to collect specific datasets of its users for research and academic purposes in 2014, they said.

The company then entered into a criminal conspiracy with Cambridge Analytica, allowing it to use the data harvested by it for commercial purposes, the officials said.

Facebook had collected certificates from both the firms in 2016-17 that data collected by them using "thisisyourdigitallife" was accounted for and destroyed. However, the CBI enquiry did not find any evidence of any such destruction, according to the officials. Read More

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CBI registers case against Cambridge Analytica

CBI registers case against Cambridge Analytica

Facebook had collected certificates from both the firms in 2016-17 that data collected by them using “thisisyourdigitallife” was accounted for and destroyed. However, the CBI enquiry did not find any evidence of any such destruction, according to the officials. (Subscribe to our Today’s Cache newsletter for a quick snapshot of top 5 tech stories. Click here to subscribe for free.) The CBI has…