The abuse of Facebook user data by the British policy consultancy Cambridge Analytica was expected and similarly expected are the reactions. Many media provide handouts to curb the flow of data. Hard-boiled take the hashtag #DeleteFacebook, delete Facebook, literally - not without their intention exactly there to announce a very last time.
However, the vast majority of users continue as before, and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg lists the usual choreography of the fallen: deny, play down, give in, but only a little bit.
With a simple click, Facebook can not be removed anyway. Far too deep, the network has anchored itself in the infrastructure of the Web. Plug-ins on just about any website can track the user even if he has previously logged out of Facebook or even logged out.
One would have to block all URLs that have to do with one or more steps with Facebook by hand on your own PC, to really ensure that the traces in the network would be incomprehensible. A group of privacy activists has gathered them on the Git Hub code platform . It takes a long time to get there, there are more than 1400 different addresses.
More than two thirds of all apps share user data with third parties
And why stop at facebook? Trading user data is the business model on the web. More than two thirds of all smartphone apps pass on private user data to third parties. The data abuse is not a fault of the system, but provided, therefore Ethan Zuckerman , director of the Civic Media Center at MIT writes .
Nothing proves this fact better than the story of Ian Bogost. The author and video game designer had published a simple Facebook game called Cow Clicker years ago and got access to hundreds of thousands of Facebook profiles. Actually, the game was a protest against simple click orgies like Farmville Farm Simulation. But their providers could not help but save user data, because Facebook tightened the review process for external apps later, writes Bogost . Information about e-mail addresses and other profile information was sent automatically without being asked. Once the data is stored somewhere, Facebook has neither the power nor the means to erase it. Similarly, Cambridge Analytica came to his data.
The data of nearly 200,000 cow-clicker users are still stored on its private servers, according to Bogost. At weddings, more than nine million apps were integrated with Facebook - games, puzzles, personality tests. Since huge privacy-contaminated sites have accumulated. Even if Zuckerberg praises improvement and considers external controls, he could not close the box with this Pandora. One may wait for the next scandal.