By: Vaibhav Singh
With 10 per cent stock downfall in last 7 days , it is better coming clear that how lethal is the data breaching case for facebook and Mark Zuckerberg . The debacle is growing each day and today it has reached India which unfolded suspicions on The Congress Party of using the same political firm, which accused of data breaching i.e. Cambridge Analytica.
Congress was also alleged of using CA’s help in recent past , but the allegations were denied by the Congress communication-in-charge Randeep Surjewala. Turning the tables on BJP , he said “Cambridge Analytica’s linked website shows that in 2010 its services were used by BJP-JD(U). Firm’s Indian partner Ovlene Business Intelligence is being run by BJP ally’s MP’s son. OBI company’s services were used by Rajnath Singh in 2009” at a press conference.
On its part, the Congress strongly denied availing the services of CA after Union minister Ravi Shankar Prasad questioned the party’s, and its chief Rahul Gandhi’s, links to the data analytics firm.
“Indian National Congress or the Congress President has never used or never hired the services of a company called Cambridge Analytica. It is a fake agenda and white lie being dished out by Union Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad,” Surjewala said.
The matter is getting trending and spreading like a wildfire because of involvement of the facebook. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg finally broke his silence on the Cambridge Analytica data scandal on Wednesday, posting an explanation online and giving interviews to some news organizations.
“We have a responsibility to protect your data, and if we can’t then we don’t deserve to serve you,” Zuckerberg said in a statement on his Facebook page.
While Zuckerberg didn’t say the word “sorry” in his initial Facebook post, the CEO did apologize in an interview with CNN.
“So this was a major breach of trust and I’m really sorry that this happened,” Zuckerberg said, adding that the company’s “responsibility now is to make sure that this doesn’t happen again.”
The root of the matter
Here’s what happened: A few years ago, a researcher put together a Facebook personality quiz that asked participants to download an app and give him access to their friends’ data. About 270,000 people consented, which ultimately led to some 50 million profiles being scraped for information. The researcher then gave to Cambridge Analytica, and the company used it to build profiles it sold to clients as political research. This was the first matter where facebook was found to be used as a site for data stealing.
Mark Zuckerberg made sure in his statement that all the apps will be verified and facebook will try to improve the security.
An insight of some important dates
2016
Allegations were there that Russians were involved in the victory of Donald Trump in US Presidential elections. The social media was falsely used. The FBI held thirteen Russians and three Russian companies guilty for the matter.
17 March , 2018
The Guardian and The New York Times posted about the involvement of Cambridge Analytica in campaigning Donald Trump in 2014 using illegal data of 5 million facebook users. The news showed that facebook was aware of the coarse activity , but haven’t informed the users.
18 March , 2018
Facebook suspended Analytic from its platform and affirmed that the Analytica app was already banned in 2015. At the time, Analytica assured of deleting all the data , but haven’t.
19 March, 2018
The CEO of Cambridge Analytica , Alexander Nix was under a sting operation. He confessed that every possible method was used to ensure that their clients win.
21 March , 2018
The matter reached India. BJP accused Congress of taking a hand from Analytica for the 2019 elections. Congress ricochet BJP’s statement on them denying the acquisition and claiming that BJP’s allies JD(U) that is Janata Dal took help from Ovlene Business Intelligence.
