There’s little doubt Cambridge Analytica’s behavior was scandalous, but was it a scam? If any of what is alleged is true, the firm and its leadership behaved unethically, and possibly illegally. But prominent journalists, academics and political practitioners have gone further, pronouncing Cambridge Analytica’s work itself to be a fraud. Of […] Read more »
Most Americans Feel They’ve Lost Control Of Their Online Data
On Monday, Facebook began notifying the up to 87 million users whose information may have been compromised and given to Cambridge Analytica. … But how much do Americans care about the privacy of their information — and how do they distinguish which information they’re comfortable sharing? Lee Rainie, director of […] Read more »
Does Facebook Know You Better Than Yourself?
What makes you tick, who you know, where you go, even where you might end up. The information you share in your profile is a mere snippet of what Facebook and its partners really know about you. Kevin Roose, a technology columnist for The Times, explains. Ainara Tiefenthäler, Robin Stein […] Read more »
‘You Are the Product’: Targeted by Cambridge Analytica on Facebook
Christopher Deason stumbled upon the psychological questionnaire on June 9, 2014. He was taking a lot of online surveys back then, each one earning him a few dollars to help pay the bills. Nothing about this one, which he saw on an online job platform, struck him as “creepy or […] Read more »
Hey, Alexa, What Can You Hear? And What Will You Do With It?
… Amazon and Google, the leading sellers of such devices, say the assistants record and process audio only after users trigger them by pushing a button or uttering a phrase like “Hey, Alexa” or “O.K., Google.” But each company has filed patent applications, many of them still under consideration, that […] Read more »
How people feel about what companies do with their data is just as important as what they know about it
It’s been an exciting week for those of us interested in what companies do with people’s data. The revelation that Cambridge Analytica got its hands on 50 million people’s Facebook data and that Facebook, at least until 2015, made this possible, enabling apps to access not only user data but […] Read more »