1、 CRS INSIGHT Prepared for Members and Committees of Congress INSIGHTINSIGHTi i Data, Social Media, and Users: Can We All Get Along? nae redacted Analyst in Cybersecurity Policy April 4, 2018 Introduction In March 2018, media reported that voter-profiling company Cambridge Analytica had exceeded Face
2、books data use policies by collecting data on millions of Facebook users. Cambridge Analytica did this by working with a researcher to gain access to the data, so the company itself was not the entity seeking access to the information. This allowed Cambridge Analytica to “scrape” or download data fr
3、om users who had granted access to their profiles, as well as those users Facebook friends (whose profiles the first user had access to, but for which the friends did not authorize access). At this time, it is publicly unknown what data were accessed. Facebook hired a digital forensics firm to audit
4、 the event. Based on media reporting and old Facebook applications, user profile data such as interests, relationships, photos, “likes,” and political affiliation may have been accessible, but not all data held by Facebook appear to have been accessed by an outside party. Additionally, as initial ac