With Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg conveniently absent
from the public eye since the Cambridge Analytica news broke over the weekend, Facebook
faces serious allegations over a data breech, which compromised 50 million
users personal information. This story and the surrounding reporting has grown
from covering the single incident with Facebook to a broader dialogue about privacy
concerns and the tradeoff consumers make every time they download or use an
app.
When signing up for social media apps (Facebook, Instagram,
Snapchat, Pinterest, etc.) and other personal convenience apps (Google Maps,
Uber, Lyft, etc.), users are often unknowingly allowing the companies behind
the apps to collect their personal information. This information is used to
optimize the user experience (i.e. location sharing for Google maps), but the
information can also be sold to other parties for their own use or worse,
leaked through a data breech and fall into nefarious hands.
The Facebook story has (re-)opened our eyes to the concerns
that come with sharing personal information. Ultimately, the question is
whether or not users will scrutinize apps’ use of their personal information.
One thing that is for certain is the government will step in and create
regulations to protect the citizens. We have already seen this in the EU with
the right to be forgotten and I imagine it won’t be long until we see some
drastic measures taken in the US to curb companies’ ability to leverage user
data for malevolent use.
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