CEO of Facebook Mark Zuckerberg broke his silence about Facebook Data Leak. During targeted campaigning to elect Donald Trump, profile information of about 50 million Facebook users was being used without taking their consent and Facebook Data Leak.
Zuckerberg did not hold a press conference or live video session to speak about the issue this time. Instead, he posted this message on his official one Facebook account that how it all happened! He laid out a timeline and explained that how profile data of these 50 million users was extracted by Cambridge Analytica voter profiling company. This company created advertisement and election campaign for Donald Trump.
Facebook Data Leak
Message Given by Mark Zuckerberg About Facebook Data Leak
He, Mark Zuckerberg wrote this message that a huge responsibility regarding protecting users data is on our shoulders. Mark clarified that if we cannot fulfill this responsibility, then we, the team of Facebook does not deserve to serve you. He further explained in his message that he is still trying to figure out and understand that what exactly happened.
We are often hearing apologizing statements by Mark Zuckerberg about data breach. COO of Facebook Sheryl Sandberg, her posts showed apologising sentiments as well. The team of this social media site has realized that they have done major violation and broke the trust of their people. Facebook team is regretting their mistake now.
How Data Got Leaked?
This Facebook data leak scandal kicked off when The New York Times came up with this piece that Cambridge Analytica captured the information of facebook profile users during the targeted campaign which was aimed to let Donald Trump win those 2016 elections. This voter profiling company got this user data through the assistance of Aleksander Kogan. He is a lecturer right at Cambridge University. He connected a personality test app with the Facebook platform. This app got further connected with users profiles data. It then snakes its way into their personal data. Now, this app has been turned off. Kogan did not use this data for personality tests, and instead shared this data with this voter profiling company. Cambridge Analytica, later on used this data to craft their political ads to make Trump campaign stronger.
A breach of trust happened between Cambridge Analytica, Facebook and Kogan, as said by Mark Zuckerberg. Mark is trying to fix this issue. On the other hand, Cambridge Analytica told the media that it was not a kind of data breach because no usernames and none of the passwords were being stolen and hacked. The two faces of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg, they posted their messages today and it is the first public statement which is made by both of them once this controversy was started.
What Steps Did Mark Zuckerberg Take?
Now Mark and his team will be auditing all companies which had previously used the platform of Facebook. This social media company will be further restricting access regarding users profiles data. Notification will also be sent to the users that which apps are accessing their data profile. These are three main measures which are taken by Mark and his team.