Quiz on Facebook Allegedly Be the Source of User Data Leakage
Security issues re-crashing Facebook related to data security. This time, related to data theft issues that take advantage of quizzes that usually exist on Facebook, such as knowing the soul mate, sustenance, including tourist destinations.
Latest, such quizzes proved to have data security issues. One of them aimed at Cambridge Analytica British data company accused of exploiting data 50 million Facebook users.
Polemic about the quiz that circulated on Facebook has long been called problematic. The reason, a number of quiz Facebook is used to deceive people to get their personal information and make money from it.
The information was disclosed by the Managing Director of Siber Security at Florida Center, Sri Sridharan. According to him, this kind of quiz does not seem to be harmless, but it's never known who actually asked for the information.
Quoted from Inquirer, Tuesday (20/3/2018), hackers often use this kind of quiz to close the dangerous links that can be used to break online security. Moreover, these quizzes are indeed provided by third parties.
"The more they know about you, the more ways you use to trick you into doing something like clicking on links you should not click on," he said.
Given the many quizzes that endanger personal data, he also suggested that users only follow quizzes from trusted websites. Users are also asked to be vigilant if they follow a quiz or poll that requires login to a Facebook account.
Personality Quiz on Facebook Also Saves Similar Dangers
This security issue was also reported by researcher Aleksandr Kogan who made the application thisisyourdigitallife. He also provides a quiz with login conditions with a Facebook account.
Apparently, it creates a gap to the quiz maker to see some of the data that users have on Facebook, such as the identity and things you like.
The data is feared used for the benefit of the data taker. Kogan who is an academic admitted to Facebook if he only did it for research purposes.
However, according to a recent report, Kogan turned out to share the results to Cambridge Analytica. Facebook insists that it has also been lied to by application makers.
"The questionable researcher, Aleksandr Kogan, attracted several hundred thousand individuals to use Facebook login to his personality quiz in 2014. He lied to the users and lied to Facebook about what he used with the data," said Alex Stamos, Chief Security Officer on Facebook.
The story of Cambridge Analytica
Cambridge Analytica (CA) itself is reportedly involved in a major scandal of data leaked tens of millions of Facebook users.
The company that once worked with the US Presidential campaign team, Donald Trump, was accused of using millions of data to create a great software program that could predict and influence voting.
A whistleblower named Christopher Wylie revealed to The Guardian Observer how the CA used personal information was taken without permission in early 2014 to build a system that could produce individual US voter profiles.
This is done to target them with politically customized ads. CA itself is a company owned by billionaire Robert Mercer and at the time was led by Trump's main advisor, Steve Bannon.
"We are exploiting Facebook and" harvesting "millions of people's profiles.We create models to exploit what we know about them and target their 'hearts' That's the basis of the whole company built," Wylie said.
Documents viewed by the Observer and confirmed by Facebook's statement, indicate that the company by the end of 2015 knows there is an unprecedented data leak.
However, Facebook at that time failed to warn the users, then made little effort to recover and secure information for more than 50 million users.
According to a New York Times report, copies of data retrieval for CA can still be found on the internet. The media team, also reportedly saw some raw data.
All data was collected through an application called thisisyourdigitallife, created by academician Aleksander Kogan, separate from his work at Cambridge University.
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