You should be more concerned about the Facebook scandal

There’s an old adage that goes, “If you’re not paying for it, you are the product.”

In social media, notably Facebook, this is especially true. Facebook wants your data. It wants to know what topics you post about, what type of content you click and what keeps you coming back. Who are your friends, and what do they like? What about your family? In all of these small facts they collect, it paints a picture of the person behind the profile.

But what happens when the company allows third parties to see your information? What happens when a stranger gets access to who you are, your likes and dislikes, and your strengths and weaknesses?

What happens when that information isn’t secure?

This weekend, The New York Times and The Observer of London reported Cambridge Analytica, a British data analysis firm with ties to wealthy Republican donor Robert Mercer and political adviser Stephen Bannon and was hired by the Trump campaign, “harvested private information from the Facebook profiles of more than 50 million users without their permission.”

This information is not new. In 2015, The Guardian revealed Cambridge Analytica had used private information from the social network. That year, Facebook put out a statement saying it would investigate how the information had gotten out. But by then it was too late. Cambridge Analytica had all it needed to build virtual profiles of American voters.

According to The New York Times and The Observer, the company used the data to target certain groups for digital ads and fundraising appeals, figure out who is likely to vote and buy $5 million in television ads.

But only 270,000 of the 50 million users had consented to have their data collected. The information was so personal, Aleksandr Kogan, the man who had collected the data for “academic purposes” from Facebook, told Cambridge Analytica they could pinpoint a user’s IQ, religion and life satisfaction.

We encourage readers to delve into the investigation. Social media users need to be aware of how information is collected through social media platforms they may be trusting. Should you be using Facebook Messenger to pay a friend or send logins or passwords to other sites? Not without knowing all of the conditions. You should know where that information is going. If Facebook was trusting enough to allow a University of Cambridge psychology professor to do whatever he wanted with the information, it’s hard to imagine where the line is drawn.

Why didn’t the company make sure all of the data was deleted after finding out about the leak? Who is responsible for this data leak? There are questions the company has yet to answer.

More importantly, companies like Facebook have to be transparent with the public. After the 2015 article from The Guardian, Facebook did not publicly acknowledge to users that private information had been breached. Yes, it is a private company — but it handles personal information we entrust it with. It’s information users may not even be aware they’re handing over.

We must demand transparency. But it starts with awareness.