Recent Data Breaches in Facebook

Running head: RECENT DATA BREACHES IN FACEBOOK
RECENT DATA BREACHES IN FACEBOOK
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1RECENT DATA BREACHES IN FACEBOOK
Table of Contents
Introduction...........................................................................................................................2
Discussion...............................................................................................................................3
The case of Cambridge Analytica studied in details..........................................3
The method appointed to accomplish the data breach....................................4
Agreements of Facebook related to data breach................................................8
Conclusion..............................................................................................................................9
References...........................................................................................................................11
Appendix...............................................................................................................................15

2RECENT DATA BREACHES IN FACEBOOK
Introduction
Facebook is being used extensively by the end-users to share a wide
range of informations but the data privacy breaches that have been
affecting Facebook are of great concern. As per the research done by
Goodwin et al. (2016), Facebook is affecting user’s privacy and serious
defects in the system of the company have been detected. The privacy of
the Facebook user’s data has been undermined and the three primary
factors for this are; users have got habituated to post anything and
everything on social media, Facebook is not taking required steps to
protect the privacy of data of the users and the third parties are making
use of this information according to their benefits. As per the research
done by Shulman, Sharma and Cosley (2016), Facebook has acquired its
position in the sphere of social networking sites by proving to be the
global website with the number of users crossing the 8 million mark. The
informations are easily available and aggregated under one platform that
makes the task of the data hackers easy and the information vulnerable to
data breaches. The figure provided in appendix 1 is associated with
showing the statistics of the data of those people who were a victim to the
data breach. The third party can develop a database based on the data
obtained from Facebook and can misuse the data, steal confidential such
as passwords or even the entire databases. It has been in the media for
the data breaches that has been affecting it since the year 2016. As per
the research done by Spiekermann et al. (2015), the recent data breach in
Facebook was done by Cambridge Analytica, a political data analysis firm
that was working on the election campaign of President Trump.
The data breaches are certainly the fault of the company but the
users who are actively sharing their information are also to be blamed for
this. It is the trust that Facebook has been able to create successfully that
though being amidst disputes still has got a huge fan base and millions
accounts to its name. As per the research done by Manworren, Letwat and
Daily (2016), the Cambridge Analytica scandal is in the news now-a-days
and the social networking giant is struggling to gain back the trust of
millions of its users because this has been the biggest scandal till date. As

3RECENT DATA BREACHES IN FACEBOOK
per the research done by Martin, Bora and Palmatier (2017), critics are of
the opinion how could a giant platform like Facebook be unaware of the
way its user’s data was being illegally used for the campaign purpose. It
highly failed to provide security to its users. In order to analyze and find
out those who are at fault in the data breaches, there has to be detail in-
depth knowledge of the scenario in the same. As per the research done by
Thomas et al. (2017), not just Cambridge Analytica, in the year 2018,
Facebook came into limelight when it declared that approximately 90
million of the users of the app have had their informations exposed to
cyber criminals following a breach in the applications feature named
“View As” that enables the users to take a view of their Facebook account
as if they were a different user. As per the research done by Edwards,
Hofmeyr and Forrest (2016), the company’s official blog read on Tuesday,
September 25 that they have detected vulnerability in their codes and this
has been a part of the code for the last one year. The loophole provided
the hackers accessibility to the accounts and thus users login tokens
especially the digital keys which normally permit the people to remain
logged in all the time were mishandled.
Discussion
The case of Cambridge Analytica studied in details
Facebook is amidst a dispute in relation to leak of personal
information and confidential data of the users. As per the research done
by Cadwalladr and Graham-Harrison, (2018), the dispute is serious
enough and roused various questions including whether these
informations have been used in order to influence the presidential
elections results and the vote Brexit in U.S in the year 2016. As per the
research done by Isaak and Hanna (2018), the company has been banned
by Facebook from any further collecting of the data but the loss is huge as
near about more than 50 million accounts were used in this scandal. As
per the research done by Common et al. (2018), the senior executive of
Cambridge Analytica were held live on media by Britain’s Channel 4 News