Reference no: EM133182818

"Facebook, Cambridge Analytica and Trump Scandal: Lesson for Government, Business, Consumers and Voters".

In early 2018, Facebook admitted to mishandling data from over 50 million Facebook users which had been improperly obtained by political data-analytics firm Cambridge Analytica.

By just a few months later, that number had risen considerably somewhere in the range of 87 million Facebook users were impacted. Facebook apologized, CEO Mark Zuckerberg went in front of Congress to answer questions, and the FTC slapped Facebook with a historically large fine $5 billion. Cambridge Analytica harvested information from over 87 million Facebook users through an external app in 2015. The data came from a personality quiz, which around 270,000 people were paid to take. The quiz "thisisyourdigitallife" in turn pulled data from their friends' profiles as well, ending in the enormous data stash.

In March 2018, a Cambridge Analytica employee named Christopher Wylie was responsible for revealing the extent of the data firm's activities in interviews with The Guardian and The New York Times. Cambridge Analytica harvested personal information on where users lived and what pages they liked, which helped build psychological profiles that analysed characteristics and personality traits.

This kind of information was later deployed in political campaigns. Wylie said: "We exploited Facebook to harvest millions of people's profiles. And built models to exploit what we knew about them and target their inner demons." The quiz was created by Aleksandr Kogan, a Russian psychology professor at the University of Cambridge, who shared the information in a commercial partnership with Strategic Communication Laboratories (SCL), which later created Cambridge Analytica.

Trump's campaign hired Cambridge Analytica in June 2016 to help target ads using voter data gathered from millions of adults in the US. The problem, Facebook says, is that Kogan then sent this user data to Cambridge Analytica without user permission, something that is against the social network's rules.

Facebook, however, says that while Kogan mishandled its data, all the information Kogan got was accessed legally and within its rules. The problem is that Kogan was supposed to hold on to the information himself, not hand it over to Cambridge Analytica or anyone else. Because the information was accessed through normal means, Facebook disputes the characterization of the incident as a breach.

Zuckerberg acknowledged that Facebook had made mistakes with users' information. "We have a responsibility to protect your data," he wrote. "And if we can't then we don't deserve to serve you."

(Adapted from "Facebook understood how dangerous the Trump-linked data firm Cambridge Analytica could be much earlier than it previously said. Here's everything that's happened up until now." Business Insider US, August 23^rd, 2019)

Answer the following questions: 

1. Briefly define the term privacy and list THREE (3) different concept of privacy.
2. Privacy nowadays has become an issue in the global era. Based on the case study, why do you think ethical issues such as privacy occurred?
3. In your opinion, do you think the Privacy Laws in Malaysia, such as Personal Data ACT 2010 (PDPA) enforced in January 2013 are adequate to protect against the privacy issue?
4. Suggest FIVE (5) ways to overcome ethical issues in business.