That's a rather suspiciously self-serving and self-reassuring characterization of each scenario, that I don't think holds up with a bit of intellectual honesty.

That's a rather suspiciously self-serving and self-reassuring characterization of each scenario, that I don't think holds up with a bit of intellectual honesty. In either case, similar amounts of personal data was harvested from facebook, for whatever purposes the clients cared to use it for, to predictable results. EDIT: And that's all besides the point - the problem isn't that someone with bad intentions got ahold of data and used in a way they shouldn't have, the problem is people are just getting ahold of data they should not have - period.