The Facebook scandal

The Facebook scandal is not a surprise and, for those readers who aren’t yet nauseated by the overwhelming amount of news and opinions on the subject, here is my view and interpretation.

In my opinion the real issue is not that Facebook and Cambridge Analytica harvested data, personal and sensitive information for some commercial and political purpose. The issue is rather that billions of people relinquished their ability to control what information the rest of the world has available about them.

When I occasionally discuss privacy with friends, work colleagues and other people, I hear their opinions about the various social media, Facebook, Snap Chat, Linked-In, WhatsApp, you name it. The bottom line is that people tend to like or dislike one medium or the other depending on a number of factors, but almost nobody comes to the conclusion that disclosing personal information, which in all likelihood will be handed over to third parties and will never be deleted, is risky and can harm those who disclose it. Interestingly, the same people also tend to agree that they care about their privacy.

Today I was reading that Brian Acton, one the founders of WhatsApp, advises people to delete Facebook. As if an app that scavenges personal data of all your contacts without them ever giving you consent to distribute it, is any better than Facebook. I am still laughing a few hours after reading such a pearl of wisdom from that pulpit.

Personal information, habits, opinions, political views, health conditions, illnesses, images and whatever else can be defined as personal (because all that is not personal has no tangible value to social media), is given to these unaccountable entities which then can do pretty much what they want with it. People argue that it is down to your settings and that if you set your profile correctly your data is safe, but they can’t see that the only way of keeping their data safe is simply not to share it. Data can be handed over unknown to the data subject, legally or illegally. And can be stolen, by hackers or even by some covert government-sponsored organisations, by thieves and scammers.

But we would be fools by thinking that the problem is confined to social media. Far from it! Last month I went to the store of a well known fashion design company in central London and bought an item. They asked me to enter all my details in an iPad to validate the warranty, so I had to inform them that the proof of purchase will give me the legal right to a warranty on the product and that all they needed to get from me is my credit card. They tried a second time and I gave them my credit card, which they accepted without asking further questions.

And it goes on. Go to a restaurant and fill in a form with some personal data for the chance of winning a prize; buy a teddy bear in a shop, enter the details of your child in a computer, including date of birth and address, to get the birth certificate of the teddy bear. The list is long and the worst I have seen is a private healthcare provider sharing your personal data without authorisation with insurance companies who then contact you to sell you their products.

Our phones scan our faces, fingerprints, iris, but who can be really sure that this data will never make it across the worldwide data networks and later be used against us?

Social media and the Facebook scandal are just the tip of the iceberg. Once the dust settles it will be business as usual. The billions of people who relinquished their personal data will never be able to delete it from wherever it is stored and billions more will start sharing their data soon – teenagers eager to enter the mainstream of social media are not in short supply.

The damage to the worldwide society is irreparable, we will learn the consequences at some stage in the future. I’d be nice to hear George Orwell’s opinion on all this.