US Federal agencies like FBI, Security and Exchanges Commission and Federal Trade Commission have decided to intensify the probe against Facebook’s involvement in Cambridge Analytica data scandal.
So, the probe will now on focus on issues such as whether Facebook knew about the data breach that affected some 71 million American users as early as three years ago.
When proved positive, the company of Mark Zuckerberg could face serious trouble as it did not inform its users and investors on time i.e. as soon it got itself involved in the data scandal run by the political consultancy firm.
Meanwhile, Mr. Zuckerberg said that he and his company will be fully cooperating with their officials in the US, UK and beyond by providing public testimony and pledging to continue to answers questions of the fed during the course of the probe.
As per the sources reporting to Cybersecurity Insiders, Cambridge Analytica was granted the permission to mine the information of only 86 million Facebook users even though only 270,000 of them gave the permission to do so. The intention of the British firm was to gather the info, use it on specifically designed software meant to predict the 2016 US Poll results- which eventually went in favor of Donald Trump.
Meanwhile, in another piece of news, NHS UK has admitted that it had accidentally disclosed data related to more than 150,000 patients who had opted out of having their personal info shared.
Britain’s Health Minister Jackie Doyle Prince made this stark revelation in the parliament yesterday and added that the data leak took place in March 2015 and was caused by a coding error caused by a third party IT company which stores and manages patient data of the healthcare. The leak was identified by NHS in 2017 only when a data audit was conducted in September last year i.e. after the outbreak of WannaCry Ransomware attack which resulted in the disruption of all digital systems of NHS for weeks in May last year.
