ICT Security-Sécurité PC et Internet

Facebook appears to be getting tougher on people who break its rules.

Hot on the heels of banning the Britain First group from its network, Facebook has announced it has suspended political data analytics firm Cambridge Analytica, and its parent company Strategic Communication Laboratories (SCL).

But the reason for the organisations being blocked from Facebook are very different. Britain First is accused of spreading vile hateful messages about Muslims, but Cambridge Analytica is accused of acquiring the data of more than 50 million Facebook users via an illegitimate route.

Cambridge Analytica is the shady data analytics firm that specialises in “psychographic” profiling. In short, they scoop up data online and use it to create personality profiles for voters.

That knowledge could be extremely useful, as individuals can then be targeted with content targeted to appeal to them, and perhaps influence their behaviour. Maybe even change their likelihood to vote in a particular direction.

Cambridge Analytica is widely credited for helping Donald Trump’s successful campaign on social media to be elected President of the United States.

Learn more / En savoir plus / Mehr erfahren:

https://www.scoop.it/t/securite-pc-et-internet/?&tag=Big+Data

https://www.scoop.it/t/securite-pc-et-internet/?&tag=Ethics

A database with 154 million US voter registration records has been leaking information on a dizzying array of intimate details, including gun ownership, Facebook profiles, address, age, position on gay marriage, ethnicity, email addresses and whether a voter is “pro-life.”

MacKeeper security researcher Chris Vickery found the instance of a CouchDB database wide open, configured as it was for public access with no username, password, or other authentication required.

As Vickery said in a post, he tracked down and notified the company that was the source of the database. It was shut down within 3 hours.

On Tuesday, Vickery reached out to the company – a data brokerage firm named L2 – to report his theory: that one of its clients had purchased data from L2 and was hosting it in an insecure manner.

L2 said that yes, that was the case. He and L2 CEO Bruce Willsie tracked down the client, and the database was taken offline within 3 hours.

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http://www.scoop.it/t/securite-pc-et-internet/?tag=DATA-BREACHES