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Anyone could download Cambridge researchers’ 4M user Facebook data set for years
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- getsugablitz2 8y agoWasn't this already known though? There was an undiscovered bug that allowed organizations access greater than they were supposed to have, I feel like it's beating a dead horse by this point.
- roywiggins 8y ago1. It wasn't a bug, it was a feature. The API explicitly allowed apps access to friends' information. They weren't exploiting the API. 2. The article describes the Cambridge Analytica database in particular being available "to verified researchers" but someone threw credentials onto GitHub where anyone could have borrowed them
- anonetal 8y agoRegarding 2: note that this is not the Cambridge Analytica data, rather similar data collected by researchers at Cambridge.
- roywiggins 8y agoYou're right. It's confusing, because the data that was supplied to CA was supplied by another Cambridge researcher.
- minton 8y agoAccording to the article they didn’t access friends’ data. >Like other quiz apps, it requested consent to access the user’s profile (friends’ data was not collected)
- mfoy_ 8y agoI feel like this issue, and others like it, cannot be thrown in people's faces enough. People need to get angry to affect change. If we want our industry to take privacy seriously, we need people to take a principled stand. Making them aware of, and outraged over, flagrant violations of your privacy, and trust, is the easiest way to do that.
- TAForObvReasons 8y agoThe battle is lost. People by and large have decided that it is worth sacrificing most of their privacy to use "free" services like Facebook and google. The only relief at this point is regulatory.
- icebraining 8y agoAwareness is not just useful to convince people to act individually, it's also useful if you want to pass that legislation.
- aeorgnoieang 8y agoWhy bother protecting something that most people, as you yourself claim, don't actually value that highly?
- tome 8y agoBecause it's actually valuable.
- ksk 8y agoWhat does that mean? People don't value it, ergo, not valuable.
- walterstucco 8y agoYour privacy is my privacy We talk at the phone, we chat, we take pictures together If you don't mind about your privacy you're probably hurting someone else's
- throwawaymanbot 8y agoI guess this story has turned in to CA doing things that others could do anyway... the real story is that this information was weaponized, and used on a populace to put in a far right type of gov.
- thisisit 8y agoOriginal link: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2168713-huge-new-facebook-data-leak-exposed-intimate-details-of-3m-users/ https://www.newscientist.com/article/2168713-huge-new-facebo... The actual problem here is not that Cambridge Analytica got the data. But that they created a site where this data was made readily available: > Academics at the University of Cambridge distributed the data from the personality quiz app myPersonality to hundreds of researchers via a website with insufficient security provisions, which led to it being left vulnerable to access for four years. Gaining access illicitly was relatively easy.
- juliangoldsmith 8y agoThis is not related to Cambridge Analytica. It's the University of Cambridge, in the UK. >Though “Cambridge” is in the name, there’s no real connection to Cambridge Analytica, just a very tenuous one through Aleksandr Kogan, which is explained below.
- yeukhon 8y agoSo is it available on the Internet like stolen password archive? Very curious what my data looks like in their hands.