How safe is Facebook and other social platforms?

What is the latest News about Facebook being exploited by Analytics firm called Cambridge Analytica and why are governments freaked about around the world?

Well to start with there is this data harvesting company called Cambridge Analytica which was used by the Trump administration to help win 2016 election by mass advertising on Facebook.

The same company is now allegedly part of Congress and BJP campaigns and the allegations are yet to be proved by either party.

Ok now coming to what exactly happened and what it means to us as users of this social platform Facebook.

Facebook collects information like that of the below when you sign up on its site:

1. Location
2. Age
3. Gender
4. Education

However as you continue to use the platform you are eventually revealing the below directly or indirectly:

1. Interests (Likes/ Dislikes)
2. Connections
3. Relationship status
4. Workplaces
5. Places you visit
6. Tagging people

What we do not realise is, we as humans have a certain pattern when it comes to our likes/dislikes, how we perceive others, how we express ourselves and most importantly what we reveal of ourselves.

Companies like Cambridge Analytica prey on such patterns and develop psychological patterns of our behaviour through various tools. Its like we have given them who we are and what we are and how we react on a platter to exploit us.

So these companies after knowing your behaviour patterns in such an elaborate way manipulate them and your psyche by influencing your state of mind, in a way tweaking their advertisements to make you more sadder when you are sad, more happier when you are happy and so on.

This emotional contagion is very powerful, let me explain them simple examples:

1. There is a news about a certain community/ race harming another and loss of life has occurred, when you post and express your anguish and grief, these companies then slowly start pushing false propaganda news, misleading articles, even history of past events that have occurred to influence you and slowly divert that attention to a certain party or individual and make you believe bringing them into power is the only solution.

2. When you are angry over a certain price rise/ or something that has effected you financially, they push news about similar such things which can effect you based on your likes on the products, brands or companies. They influence your affiliation to a certain brand/ product to another.

3. Most importantly, the Apps that you use keep asking to use Facebook for easy login and easy access anytime, but these are the apps that can trap your information, be careful while giving the permissions during installation of the app. Even Facebook cant control what information flows to them, at least for now.

4. They capture your sexual orientation by just knowing the people you date, the relationship statuses you update. They then determine your state of mind whenever you change the status and appropriately divert needed influencers.

5. They track your messages, capture every intricate details of your opinions, your everything and then use that data to get to your psyche.

I can cite many many examples but the message am trying to give is, be careful with what you share, what you express and what you like.

As a rule of the thumb just stick to the basics like:

1. Not expressing your emotional/ volatile state
2. Not sharing everything and anything you do in your personal life
3. Limiting your usage
4. Very careful with Apps that request your Facebook information and what permissions to your phone you allow them.
5. Don't excessively Photo tag people, have you observed how the face tagging works, it automatically pops up the name of the individual in the picture without you entering most of the times, well that shows you how much of image profiling data they have on you, your friends and family. isn't it scary?

Facebook has 2.2 billion active users monthly, it's sister concerns WhatsApp has 1.5 billion active monthly users and Instagram 800 million active monthly users respectively. Facebook alone earned $4 billion through ads last year, imagine how much data it is collecting through the 3 extensively used platforms it owns and how invaluable the data is and how much it can control us.

I hope the above helps you understand the grave dangers of exposing everything that you are to the Internet.

As they say DATA is everything and it is what will define/ destroy the world of tomorrow.