Gadgetory

Facebook appears to have lost control of its data a researcher appears to have taken more than 50 million people's profiles and handed it over to a data analytics company which then turned around and used it for political advertising both in the brexit campaign and in the 2016 election so what we're learning is that Facebook hasn't been able to keep control of our data very well and it didn't do much in between to make sure it was safe once they found out it was it was taken out Cambridge analytic is a data analytics company that worked with a University researcher who created an app that ostensibly gave you a personality quiz but actually was designed to take your information and that of your friends from Facebook and then hand it over to this research company this data analytics company which turned around and used it for political advertising this company by the way says that it has information on 230 million American voters that's pretty much all of us so that is what they are using to work with political campaigns Cambridge analytic Oh received this information from the researcher and that's where this gets bad so the university researcher created this app people wanted to use the app they login they give him access to their information so far everything is above board that's totally normal for Facebook where it gets bad is that he then handed that information over to another person without asking any of us and that is where it's against Facebook's rules facebook says app developers can receive information about you whatever doesn't matter but once they hand it over to someone else that's where they're breaking the rules Christopher Wiley is one of the researchers who actually worked with Cambridge analytic and is now the whistleblower who has basically blown the lid off this whole thing Donald Trump's campaign actually worked with Cambridge analytic afore well Steve Bannon his chief strategist in the White House was an advisor for them the Mercer family who helped fund his campaign was also involved with Cambridge analytics so there's a wat involved here the White House tells CBS News that the Trump campaign did not use Cambridge analytical during the general election but during the primaries the company helped Trump figure out what kind of messaging to use where to go and how to do advertising at the end of the day your data is being accessed by all sorts of different people app developers researchers all sorts of things the problem is Facebook doesn't always tell us and in this case Facebook found out three years ago that this company had supposedly broken its rules and taken 50 million peoples profiles and when they told them to delete it the New York Times reporting says that they lied so there's a problem here Facebook isn't being fully on forthright with all of us and it turns out that possibly a huge leak of information happened that none of us are comfortable with