Case Study Analysis: Facebook Cambridge Analytica Information Ethics

This case study examines the Facebook Cambridge Analytica scandal, focusing on the ethical implications of the data breach. The report begins with an introduction to the case, detailing how the Open Graph application enabled third-party developers to access user data. It then explores the actions of Cambridge Analytica, which collected personal information from Facebook users to create psychological profiles. The ethical issues are analyzed, including the unauthorized access and use of user data, and the lack of transparency. The study identifies who was affected by the breach, including the 87 million users whose data was compromised, and the actions taken by Facebook in response. The conclusion summarizes the key findings, highlighting the privacy issues and the need for improved data security measures. The case study references news articles and reports to provide a comprehensive analysis of the scandal.

Information ethics

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Table of Contents
Introduction...........................................................................................................................................2
Facebook Cambridge analytical case.................................................................................................2
Ethical issues involved.......................................................................................................................4
Who is affected?................................................................................................................................5
Actions were taken by company........................................................................................................5
Conclusion.............................................................................................................................................6
References.............................................................................................................................................7

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Introduction
In the year 2010, the Facebook developed and launched the open graph
application that enables third party developers to reach Facebook consumers and
access their private information along with their family’s data. It is one of the common
privacy issue faced by the numbers of users due to which many consumers lost their
private details like photos, name, address and so on (Vox, 2019). This report objective is
to analyse the Facebook Cambridge analytical case and identify the ethical issues
associated with this article. In this study, the new article that was published on 18th
march 2019 will be discussed with the complete information about the case and data
privacy issues. Due to this problem numbers of users and stakeholders were affected
and users lost their personal information and data. This report is divided into several
sections, for example, Facebook Cambridge analytical case, ethical issues involves,
actions taken by the company, and conclusion.
Facebook Cambridge analytical case
In the year 2010, the Facebook social media application developed an advanced
application that was an open graph that enables the third party websites to gather data
and information of users and their friend's information. In the year 2013, Cambridge
academic Aleksandr Kogan produced an application on Facebook along with his
organization Global Science Research. Mainly, this application asked some question to
consumers in order to design a psychological profile and around 300000 consumers
provided their personal information for generating a psychological profile and this
process harvested their personal information (BBC News, 2019).
It is one of the common privacy and data issue cases that was published by many
researchers and recently the Julia Carrie published a news article on Facebook
Cambridge analytical on 18th march 2019 (The Guardian, 2019). This news article
highlighted that Cambridge analytical used the collected data and information in Ted
Cruz’s presidential campaign. This article also identified that in the year 2017, the
Cambridge analytica collected the private details of the 50 million Facebook users and
this data later revised as 87 million. It is observed that after this privacy issue the
management team of Facebook changed their security and privacy policy and
eliminated the Open graph website but this policy was not retroactively imposed.

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According to the new article, it was evaluated the data and information obtained
by the Cambridge analytical were responsible for the defeat of Hillary Clinton. The
Cambridge analytical privacy attack changed the world and many users suffered from
the hacking and data breach related issues (CNET, 2019). After this attack, Facebook has
unleashed upon us over the course of the last four years. But when the Cambridge
analytical case study broke one year ago, the CEO of Facebook has not fulfilled his
promises to secure the user's data.
The Mark Zuckerberg's told that the IT team of our company is responsible for
the data privacy issue and now we produced and developed the advanced security
systems for securing the privacy of consumer’s data and information. It is observed that
the Facebook allowed the third party developers to access the accounts and details of
consumers along with their friend’s data and around 87 million individuals suffered
from the data breach and privacy issues (CNBC, 2019). In the year 2017, all these data
and information used the election and companies used data to find potential voters who
supported Donald Trump. In the recent interview of Mark Zuckerberg, it is observed
that it was a mistake of organization and they were not able to protect the data of users.
After this data attack and case, the corporation transferred notifications and
messages to the use of Facebook regarding its security and privacy policies. This attack
affected the numbers of consumers and companies that use Facebook social media to
interact with their customers (The Guardian, 2019). According to the news article, the
Facebook organization had allowed Cambridge analytica to extract the numbers of
personal data of consumers and companies and it is used in the politics which is one of
the common ethical issues faced by users.
From this news, it is analysed that the Facebook Cambridge analytica case is
related to the information system because third party applications collected the private
details of users from the computer and mobile devices. Moreover, Cambridge analytical
obtained the private information like name, profile pictures; mobile number, and so on
from the computer networks and Open graph website helped them to collect data of
their friends and family members (The Guardian, 2019). The major subject of this attack
is data and information of consumer where numbers of users were suffered from this

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issue and Facebook developed an application which creates a problem in the security of
data.
However, at that time many organizations have faced the large data breach issue
and only Facebook Company has endured such an existential reckoning. Due to this
situation, the data of consumers and stakeholders were amassed, extracted and
exploited by the Cambridge analytical company (The Guardian, 2019). During the year
2018, the CEO of Facebook Mark Zuckerberg provided the latest talking point asserting
that in the year 2016 at the time of the election the Cambridge analytical used these
data for identifying the numbers of voters that voted Donald Trump.
The major outcome of this attack is that around 80 million individuals lost the
privacy of their accounts and information and Facebook banned the Open Graph
platform for reducing the level of a data breach (The Guardian, 2019). It is argued that
the Facebook organization did not focus on the privacy and security of user’s data
during the development of the Open Graph application and they also allowed third party
applications to collect user’s data and details.
Ethical issues involved
The Facebook Cambridge analytical is one of the common attacks in the field of
an information system where the user’s suffered from the data breach and hacking
related issues. The first ethical issue faced by users is that Facebook developed and
launched the Open Graph application that collected the data and information of
consumers. Moreover, they accessed and obtained the private details of the 87 million
users without their permission which is also a part of the ethical issue (Engadget, 2019).
It is observed that after this data breach issue the IT team of Facebook did not
ban the Open graph website and did not produce any security policy regarding the data
of users. Due to which the Cambridge analytical company gathered all information of
individuals and companies and used these data to identify the numbers of voters that
provided their votes to the Donald Trump (Tom’s Guide, 2018). It is observed that
Facebook did not send any notification to the users regarding their privacy and security
and they collected data of their friends without taking any permission.

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Therefore, numbers of users and companies faced the data breaching issue and
they could not secure their private messages and information but the IT team of
Facebook did not take any serious action regarding the privacy of consumers. Moreover,
they did not improve their security due to which many companies faced the data breach
and hacking related issues and they lost numbers of customers (The Guardian, 2019).
Who is affected?
Due to this ethical issue, around 87 million users were affected and numbers of
the organization also affected because all these are connected by the Facebook accounts
and Cambridge analytical obtained information from computer systems. Moreover,
shareholders are also affected by this attack due to which the price of shares decreased
by 20% and companies lost their numbers of users in the last five years (The Guardian,
2019). It is observed numbers of consumers removed their accounts from Facebook and
they removed their personal information from the social media. The IT team of
Facebook promised that they will design and implement the security and privacy
policies but still they did not produce any security system for improving the security of
the user's data.
Actions were taken by the company
After this attack, the Facebook Company sent a notification to the users
regarding their privacy and security. They also provided a process to users in order to
secure their personal details and users removed their accounts from the computer and
mobile devices in order to secure other private information (The Guardian, 2019).
Moreover, the IT team of Facebook designed and implemented the numbers of security
policies and improved the security of user’s accounts by using encryption and
cryptography techniques. The Mark Zukerberg promised that they will change the IT
infrastructure of their computer servers and they also adopted the high level network
techniques.
It is analysed that the Facebook Cambridge analytica is considered as a dilemma
because the company took the data of more than 87 million users without their
permission and they were faced the data breach problem (The Guardian, 2019). This
problem was occurred due to IT developers because they did not provide security to the
data of users and they produced Open Graph application with fewer security systems.

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Conclusion
From the above discussion, it has been concluded that the Facebook Cambridge
analytical is a privacy issue that faced by numbers of users in the year 2017. This report
focused on the ethical issues occurred in this case and actions taken by the company for
improving the privacy of user's data. It has been identified that there are numbers of
stakeholders, companies and users were affected due to this security concern and it is
considered as a dilemma because users faced the data breach related problems.

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References
BBC News (2019) Facebook-Cambridge Analytica scandal. Retrieved from:
https://www.bbc.com/news/topics/c81zyn0888lt/facebook-cambridge-
analytica-scandal
CNBC (2019) Here’s everything you need to know about the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
Retrieved from: https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/21/facebook-cambridge-
analytica-scandal-everything-you-need-to-know.html
CNET (2019) Facebook allegedly knew of Cambridge Analytica data mining earlier than
reported. Retrieved from: https://www.cnet.com/news/facebook-allegedly-
knew-of-cambridge-analytica-data-mining-earlier-than-reported/
Engadget (2019) Facebook knew about Cambridge Analytica prior to 'Guardian' exposé.
Retrieved from: https://www.engadget.com/2019/03/22/facebook-cambridge-
analytica-guardian-expose/
The Guardian (2019) The Cambridge Analytica scandal changed the world – but it didn't
change Facebook. Retrieved from:
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/mar/17/the-cambridge-
analytica-scandal-changed-the-world-but-it-didnt-change-facebook
Tom’s Guide (2018) The Quick and Dirty Facts About Facebook and Cambridge Analytica.
Retrieved from: https://www.tomsguide.com/us/facebook-cambridge-data-
trump,news-26800.html
Vox (2019) The Facebook and Cambridge Analytica scandal, explained with a simple
diagram. Retrieved from:
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/3/23/17151916/facebook-
cambridge-analytica-trump-diagram