Essentially, the data that CA took from Facebook — mainly information gleaned from user profiles and interests — wasn’t private to begin with, not really. It’s just that the vast majority of users either didn’t really know it wasn’t private or didn’t really care. Generally, apps aren’t placing their fine print front and center when we’re using them, nor are they priming us to think too hard about what the long-term or large-scale ramifications of providing our data — and in this case, our friends’ data — could be.
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Costco has bulk packs of tin foil available …
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How can you be “tired of explaining” something that you have yet to actually explain even a single time?
Also…the mindlessly regurgitated misuse of the term “data breach” notwithstanding, there’s absolutely nothing in that Reuters story indicating that the data in question was “stolen”. You do have this though:
Facebook first acknowledged that user data had been improperly channeled to Cambridge Analytica…
So…the data (not a “whole file”, whatever that is supposed to refer to) was “channeled to” CA by Facebook. Whether that was done “improperly” (by what standards?) or not, that’s not an assertion that the data was “stolen”.
Honeybees are making a comeback.
Joel you started this topic knowing that there would be differing opinions and you shared yours.
So now that you opened this topic for discussion, people are asking you questions as to your opinion and get clarification from you around what you stated in those opinions and assumptions.
No need to go on the defensive “tired of explaining”. Gotta be prepared if you are going to start a topic as big as this. 
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I’m more concerned about Stephen Hawking’s prediction he made two weeks before he died than I am about FB 
and watch out for that falling Chinese space station expected soon.
oops, I guess I went off-topic
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I would like to see the car with driver that Elon Musk sent up to come back down.
My honeybee reference was in line with that article in that if they die off, good luck. Off topic, but even more important than FB
I lean towards giving @joelw135 a little leeway here and support the notion that it is better to lean towards extra paranoid, rather than too comfortable.
“channeled”, “improperly”, etc., etc., is all just corporate doublespeak to hide:
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The fundamental and ubiquitous and sole business model of Facebook which is to create extremely valuable, minable data stores and use them to (a) tailor the platform to encourage user behavior which reveals more data and/or consumerism, and (b) deliver value to advertisers and other companies purchasing this data and analytics.
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Facebook’s negligence in allowing any data to be sold or shared that exceeded what users explicitly permitted per the Terms of Service and/or any “private data access authorization requests” by Facebook apps. The specific detail shared so far is that the API allowed access to Friends’ personal data, not just the authorizing primary member, and that this may or may not have exceeded the legal or reasonably expected scope of the authorization.
Thank you, everyone has right to their opinion, but I said before giving away or allowing someone who had access to my info to take my info is considered stealing. So yes it is a form of criminal action, or criminal neglect. either way wrong in my books. I guess we have each stated our thoughts, and so have many others here and across the world. So I am done for now as this could go on and on. At least we had an open conversation.
I think you’re missing my point…which had nothing to do with defending Facebook (nor anyone else, for that matter), nor their business model. It’s about the assertions that the data was “stolen” and that there were “criminal” actions involved. I have yet to see anything supporting that assertion.
But not their own facts.
Not by anyone who actually knows what that word means.
So, let me ask yet one more time (not that I think you’ll be able to answer): What actual criminal statute(s) was/were violated, and by whom?
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The only way in the world we live in today that you are going to have any privacy is to not have anything in your name. Do not sign up for a bank account or credit card, a grocery store / CVS / Walmart shopping card, gas, survey, do not have a phone, a car, anything that can gather and collect information on you. Avoid satellites and facial recognition cameras as well.
As unfortunate as it is, there is going to come a day where everyone has a file with everything in it and it can be accessed from anywhere.
As much as I hate Facebook and social media in general (including texting) for how it has changed the world in how we communicate and socilaize with one another and how I see this as a detriment to society and human kind, there is no stopping it. With that, it’s the way of the world and you have to adapt to it, even if you don’t like it. Unethical and invasion of privacy, perhaps, but the writing on the wall over the last decade alone and with all the hacks, it’s not very hard to see that signing up for an account online is going to lead to information about you getting distributed, regardless that when you signed up and created an account, you were told it’s private and we will protect your data. That’s jist not realistic anymore. You say something to Alexa or Google Home, well now they know even that much more about you and how you talk. Compile everything from every account you have ever created, and when that information gets consolidated together one day, they are going to know everything, what you look like, how you talk, what you eat, where you go, your bathroom habits, appointments, all in one place.
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OK so Cambridge Analytica improperly obtained info from the accounts of the friends of people that used this app mydigitalife.
I’m still not even clear how that’s related to the option to download one’s own information from the settings page.
The whole purpose of this thread is just confusing. Does the OP want to talk about the Cambridge Analytica scandal, or the info that’s in the file he downloaded himself? Or the relationship between the two?
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We have not been told exactly what data is included in “info from the accounts of the friends of people that used mydigitallife”.
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Therefore, we can only assume that Cambridge Analytica was able to obtain any or all of the data contained in the downloadable file from the Facebook “settings page”, if we are a friend of anyone that used “mydigitallife”.
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We are also not assured that Cambridge Analytica wasn’t able to obtain data not shown in the downloadable file. Perhaps Facebook contains a log of all your voicemails, for example, and does not allow you to download this. There is zero reason to believe that they do not collect additional data and did not leak or sell this too.
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Of course, that’s a worst case scenario and is also out of date compared to the data that may or may not have been present and/or accessible at the actual time of the unauthorized access.
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I just don’t use my real name… They know nothing about me!
Ummm… They don’t need a name in order to create a unique person identifier. Unless you randomize a sufficient number of personal variables across the board - name, gender, age, location, interests, relationship status, …
Only a small number of fact (or consistent fictions) are required to be statistically significant in identifying you.
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I’m not on FB. Never was, never will be.
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Ok so? If you use Facebook services like messenger, they will scrape as much of your information as they possibly can. Just like every other online service you interact with.
Read the terms of service that you agree to by using the app, or don’t use the app. While it seems that simple logic might not have protected people from this Cambridge Analytica fiasco, what does that have to do with FB messenger capturing metadata when you allow it to sync with your contacts?