University : Edith Cowan University UniLearnO is not sponsored or endorsed by this college or university.
Subject Code : ENS2159
Assignment Task

Introduction

Facebook data privacy scandal came out in March 2018, and it received huge media attention from all over the world and especially in United states of America. An application was created by Dr. Aleksandr Kogan who was University of Cambridge psychology professor in 2013. This application was provided to the Facebook users for a personality test. Around 0.3 million people downloaded this application, this application collected all its user’s data and their friend’s data who allowed it in their privacy settings. Around 87 million users ware targeted by this application. (Kang & Frenkel, 2018)
Later this data was provided to a political consulting firm called Cambridge Analytica, this data was used in Strategic Communication Laboratories which was owned by Cambridge Analytica. Data was used to determine user behaviour and personality. (Rosenberg, Confessore, & Cadwalladr, 2018). In 2015 Facebook discovered the breach of their data. They removed the application and asked for a certification from Dr. Aleksandr Kogan and Cambridge Analytica that they had destroyed the data. They certified to Facebook that the data has been destroyed. “A former employee said that he had recently seen hundreds of gigabytes on CA servers, and that the files were not encrypted” (Rosenberg, Confessore, & Cadwalladr, 2018). Facebook did not make any public statement and neither reported this issue to the Federal Trade Commission. Facebook closed the case after getting the certification from Cambridge Analytica. (Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg Hearing on Data Privacy and Protection, 2018)
The story broke out on 17/03/2018 in The Guardian (Cadwalladr & Graham-Harrison, 2018) and the New York Times (Rosenberg, Confessore, & Cadwalladr, 2018), that Facebook shared the data of its users to a third party service who used this data to aide conservative candidates including Donald trump in their election campaign. A campaign was started against Facebook named #DeleteFacebook and Facebook faced lawsuits by European union, United Kingdom and USA governmental bodies, in three days Facebook lost $50billion in stock market because of sudden drop in share prices. (Rani, 2018)
Cause of the scandal

  • User’s data privacy policy didn’t safeguard against user data breaches.
  • Allowing third person or applications to access the user’s data was unethical and unlawful.
  • Aiding a political cause.
  • Facebook did not take any legal steps against that company.
  • Cambridge Analytica made a false certification about data destruction.

 How the scandal impacted Facebook

  • Lost the trust of its user’s
  • Loss of $50 billion in share prices
  • Faced lawsuits
  • Affected IT industry badly

Ethical problems of the scandal

  • Facebook allowed a third party to access its user’s data 
  • Data was collected without user’s permission
  • Misused the data for political and adverting purposes
  • Facebook did not take any legal action when they learned about data being collected by a third party
  • Cambridge Analytica lied about data encryption

Recommendations (ENS2159)

  • Facebook should provide a strong privacy policy to its users
  • Facebook should not give access to its user’s data to any third party.
  •  Users must made aware of their privacy and what are company’s privacy policies
  • Government should make new laws about how to better protect user’s online and how to safeguard their identity and private data.
     

This ENS2159: Engineering Assignment has been solved by our Engineering Experts at UniLearnO. Our Assignment Writing Experts are efficient to provide a fresh solution to this question. We are serving more than 10000+ Students in Australia, UK & US by helping them to score HD in their academics. Our Experts are well trained to follow all marking rubrics & referencing style.

Be it a used or new solution, the quality of the work submitted by our assignment experts remains unhampered. You may continue to expect the same or even better quality with the used and new assignment solution files respectively. There’s one thing to be noticed that you could choose one between the two and acquire an HD either way. You could choose a new assignment solution file to get yourself an exclusive, plagiarism (with free Turnitin file), expert quality assignment or order an old solution file that was considered worthy of the highest distinction.

Eureka! You've stumped our genius minds (for now)! This exciting new question has our experts buzzing with curiosity. We can't wait to craft a fresh solution just for you!

  • Uploaded By : Alex Cerry
  • Posted on : October 01st, 2018

Whatsapp Tap to ChatGet instant assistance