Trump Campaign Harvested Data from 50 million Facebook Users

It has been revealed that data analytics firm Cambridge Analytica harvested private information from more than 50 million Facebook users in order to build a system that could profile individual US voters. This system would be then able to target people with personalised, political advertisements to support President Donald Trump’s 2016 election campaign.

Evgeny Chereshnev, CEO at Biolink.Tech, said: "It doesn’t matter what this data leakage would have proven or not proven. The point is that there was always the opportunity, and possibility, that certain data would be extracted from Facebook by hackers or third party providers that we, the users, were not aware of. It has been said that it’s data taken from Facebook without the users’ consent. This is both true and not true.

"If you read the licence agreement, when you sign up to Facebook, you would understand that you have absolutely no rights when it comes to your data; your information, what you post and how information is gathered about you. Facebook can analyse and use this data any way it wants.

"I am actually very happy this has happened, as it shows just how severe and significant the problem is. Firstly, if there is a database, it only has two states – already hacked or will be hacked – that is simply the fate of all centralised user databases. We have to embrace blockchain and diversified, distributed way of dealing with data.

"Secondly, we need to totally rethink the way we approach data - our digital trail and DDNA (digital DNA). Privacy of personal data MUST become a constitutional right that everyone has from birth. Data is there forever, and it should be illegal to take it from users. It goes back to the age old question – what is self?

"Who owns it and what needs to be co-owned by third parties for self to coexist in the society that we live in? For example, a healthcare system needs access to my vital health records in order to administer the right treatment, but they don’t need to own that data. We should own our own self.

"In that sense, the EU is the closest to doing the right thing, but there is always room for improvement, even when GDPR comes into effect."