Data privacy in the wake of Facebook and Cambridge Analytics

Facebook and Cambridge Analytics are dominating headlines and this is not surprising considering how protective we are of our personal information. Businesses want to harness the data they hold – and, in the world of big data, AI and machine learning, data can be extremely useful to improve health as well as to make our experiences online more interesting.

Facebook and Cambridge Analytics are dominating headlines and this is not surprising considering how protective we are of our data. Gemserv help businesses harness the data they hold – and, in the world of big data, AI and machine learning, data can be extremely useful to improve health as well as to make our experiences online more interesting.

However, the Facebook / Cambridge Analytics demonstrates that when organisations collect vast amounts of data with little governance, something is bound to go wrong. Now, some have said that it was a data breach, which it wasn’t. What happened was caused by the Facebook business model, as Zuckerberg himself asserted. Handing over data to developers with no control over it, was malpractice that needs addressing. It is instead time to demand change. The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), coming into force in May, does provide some useful answers. For example, it stipulates much stricter rules related to controller / processor agreements. Under those rules, handing over data to developers wouldn’t have been so easy. Furthermore, transparency becomes stricter, with more stringent requirements for data subjects to know exactly what happens to their data.

Gemserv’s Ivana Bartoletti has recently featured on a number of BBC news programmes discussing data ethics and the importance of safeguarding data. To view the debates please click on the links below:

Vitoria Derbyshire, BBC 2 -http://bit.ly/IBderbybbc

BBC World News - http://bit.ly/IBworldnews

The Media Show, BBC Radio 4 - http://bit.ly/IBradio4media