With Cambridge Analytics, a UK based data mining company being involved with lifting Facebook information off of profiles to sway election results lead to Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook to meet with the House Energy and Commerce Committee regarding the company’s use and protection of user data on Capitol Hill in Washington.
The problem began when nearly 2 billion users of Facebook had their information freely sold to data mining companies. This questions the ethical conduct of Facebook.
During a chat with MIT Professor, John Reed about the issue. He claimed that the real problem was with the transparency of Facebook and their terms and conditions. They are lengthy and are heavily worded which people often ignore and just click “accept”. By doing so, we are allowing for Facebook to use our information and sell to data mining companies. So “although Facebook says its a free service, we are really the commodity that they are selling” said Professor Reed.
So how does this affect us and what can we do about it?
Professor Reed says the best way to be safe is by not using social media at all but considering the impact it has on us, we can’t escape it. So one way is to limit our use and the number of platforms we subscribe to but also to install a VPN; a blocker that encrypts data on a particular network server and to use alias names to keep our identity safe.
Image Reference: https://rbncblog.wordpress.com/2015/11/05/big-brother-added-you-on-facebook-explaining-the-investigatory-powers-bill/