The impact of the Facebook Cambridge Analytica scandal

Much has been made of the Facebook Cambridge Analytica scandal -- and for good reason.Facebook, arguably the largest social media site in the world, is the origination of a data breachthat is thought to have affected as many as 87 million users around the globe. While estimatessuggest that more than one million people in Indonesia, the United Kingdom and the Philippinesmight have been affected, it's thought that nearly 64,000 users in New Zealand had their datacompromised.

It Started With 10

Ten. That's the number of people in New Zealand who downloaded an app for a personality quiz.The actions of those 10 people though rippled out to include almost 64,000 New Zealanders.These people were ones whose information was potentially compromised because they wereFacebook friends, according to Facebook's head of communication for New Zealand and Australia,Antonia Sanda. It's safe to assume, however, that many more people around the world wereaffected because of the global reach of Facebook. As of this writing, that possibility cannot beruled out. Facebook informed the country's privacy commissioner, John Edwards, that thecompany was alerting those New Zealanders who were affected by the breach.

Far-Reaching Effects

Also at issue was how Cambridge Analytica used the data it obtained about the New Zealanderswho took the quiz and their tens of thousands of friends who were also impacted. Both the extentand the effects of the privacy breach were still being established with the possibility of its fullestramifications not being known for some time.

Because this event occurred four years ago, and the data mining tactics employed by CambridgeAnalytica were known two years ago, the concern among many in the privacy industry is thatFacebook only began acknowledging its occurrence recently. The political manipulation thatoccurred in the United States as the result of these tactics only hints at its potential for abuse, harmand malice.

It's also important to remember that though Facebook was the backdrop for this particular datamining incident, the private information of thousands of New Zealanders is collected each day bycompanies large and small. This provides the potential for further data mining and manipulation.