Mozilla: Facebook Data Leak Is Like a 'Nuclear Waste Spill'
Mozilla is best known as the maker of web browser Firefox, simply the organization besides has a philanthropic role. As office of that function, Mozilla has compiled a massive, graphic-laden assessment of the internet itself, dubbed the Internet Health Study 2022.
I sat down with Mozilla's Executive Director Mark Surman to talk over some of the report's primal findings, including the scourge of fake news, consolidation of industry power, and how leaked data should be treated a "radioactive waste."
"If you lot wait at the headlines, it looks like we are having a pretty bad year for the internet," Surman says. "On the question of data protection and the problem with the centralization of power in the hands of just a few tech companies, this is not a salubrious place."
In fact, as the Net Health Written report is being released on the same day Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is testifying before the Senate most the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
Most consumers don't understand the nuances of what Cambridge Analytica did. But in a nutshell, a lot of data was nerveless using survey tools that were valid at the time, Surman explains.
Approximately 270,000 took the survey in question, and their responses were sold to Cambridge Analytica, in violation of Facebook's rules. Compounding the consequence was the fact that earlier 2022, when this survey was administered, Facebook allowed app developers to collect not just the survey taker's data, but besides data from all of their friends. So that 270,000 actually affected an estimated 87 1000000 people.
"Cambridge Analytics took all that data, put it in a database, and continued information technology to a agglomeration of other data sets," Surman explains. "Then they sold that off as a way to target advertizement."
Is that a data leak? Surman has a amend analogy. "It is not then much a information leak so much as it is a radioactive waste spill," he says. "Something they didn't want to have out in the surround got out in the environment."
The nuclear waste example also reflects how irrevocable these data spills are. Facebook ended the policy of sharing friends' data in 2022, but that didn't stop Cambridge Analytica from holding on to what information technology had for at least another year, and maybe to this day.
"Radioactive waste likewise has a half-life," Surman says. "A lot of user data is out there."
The current reckoning is forcing companies to re-evaluate their role in the data economy. Nosotros just collect too much data, Surman says. Many companies collect and shop data on their customers past default and often don't even know what they will do with it. Hopefully, companies are starting to recognize that is a risky proposition, Surman says. He hopes nosotros move to an age of "lean data" collection.
Another affair the Net Health Study Makes clear is that health of the cyberspace varies profoundly across the globe. Connection speed, data costs, and basic freedoms shift from country to state, and some countries are starting to pull alee of the The states. India passed cyberspace neutrality protections at about the same fourth dimension the FCC rolled them dorsum here, he says, and then the net may be healthier away.
Cheque out our full interview with Surman in the video to a higher place.
For more Fast Forward with Dan Costa, subscribe to the podcast. On iOS, download Apple'due south Podcasts app, search for "Fast Forward" and subscribe. On Android, download the Stitcher Radio for Podcasts app via Google Play.
About Dan Costa
Source: https://sea.pcmag.com/feature/20541/mozilla-facebook-data-leak-is-like-a-nuclear-waste-spill
Posted by: blessingpristor.blogspot.com
0 Response to "Mozilla: Facebook Data Leak Is Like a 'Nuclear Waste Spill'"
Post a Comment