Estate Living Magazine Estate Living Issue 29 May | Page 64

Marketing
at the time
of Facebook
breaches
At the end of last year, Facebook had more than two billion
active monthly users worldwide. Considering the global
population comes in at a shade under eight billion, this is
not an insignificant number. People have come to rely on
the social network site to share photos and stories with
friends and family. Some even forego surfing the web and
use Facebook as their primary means of staying up to date
with news and current affairs. It is because of this that
the recent data breach, that is affecting more than 87
million users is having a significant ripple effect on the
platform and the businesses who have come to rely on it
for marketing.
In March 2018, news broke that Cambridge Analytica, a
data analytics firm working with Donald Trump’s election
team and the Brexit campaign, harvested millions of US
voter profiles on Facebook. This information was used
to build a sophisticated algorithm that could predict
and influence choices during the American presidential
election. Such has been the extent of this, that it is now
estimated that almost 60 000 South Africans have also
been compromised.
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