REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg
Facebook is
back in the hot seat over revelations that data on millions of its users was taken and used by a company working for Donald Trump's presidential campaign and the Brexit vote.
Specifically, a company called Cambridge Analytica (CA) took data from a reported 50 million Facebook users and built personality profiles in order to serve people with political ads to "target their inner demons," according Christopher Wylie, the former CA employee who blew the whistle on the situation, as reported by The Observer and The New York Times.
Facebook last week banned CA from its platform and announced it planned to audit the company to verify if the Facebook data had truly been deleted, as CA had promised it had been years ago. There's now a tornado of investigations being launched over the matter in the US and the UK.
Transform talent with learning that worksCapability development is critical for businesses who want to push the envelope of innovation.Discover how business leaders are strategizing around building talent capabilities and empowering employee transformation.Know More All of this begs the question: How could Facebook know your "inner demons"?
The truth is that Facebook knows a scary amount of stuff on you. Its whole business relies on watching what you do on Facebook, as well as tracking what you do on the internet via social media plug-ins (like the ability to "Like" a news post on a third-party website) and tracking the apps you install on your phone.
Here's how to find out exactly what Facebook knows about you.