Risk & Business Magazine Hardenbergh Insurance Group Magazine Summer 2018 | Page 25

FACEBOOK DATA Facebook Profiteering & YOUR Data BY ANTHONY MONGELUZO F acebook has been under the gun recently due to their business practices and, more specifically, how they handled their users’ personal information. Initial reports suggested that they shared approximately fifty million users’ data with Cambridge Analytica. Subsequent reports later upgraded that number to eighty-seven million. Cambridge is taking the brunt of the blame for this scandal, but if you look farther back, any application that you used to sign into Facebook had access to similar data. Facebook was aware of these business practices and began closing some of the loopholes in the earlier part of this decade. You cannot “return” or make compromised information private ever again. We need to use this experience to learn and protect ourselves moving forward. Here are some tips to protect your privacy with Facebook (and other online applications): • When using your web browser, always use private mode. Always. That will keep your session private and disable the use of tracking cookies that will follow you around the web. • Be mindful when an application asks you for access to your call log, messages, camera, calendar, contacts, and so on. When you click “allow,” understand that they will immediately begin to access and mine your data. • DO NOT use Facebook to log in when signing up for a new app. Go through the process to make a new user account using your private email. When you log in to an app through Facebook, you give both entities access to share data between Facebook and that application. Does Facebook really need to know your Uber ride history on top of everything else? • Do not connect to public wireless networks. • Ensure that any website to which you provide personal or payment information is secured and using “https” and not “http.” • Shut off GPS and WIFI when not using these services. We live in a world of big data. Facebook isn’t the only company that has used your personal data to make money. Google has b een doing it for years, and all the social platforms profit from your data. The difference is Facebook broke their promise to protect its users and wields the most power due to the number of monthly users who access their platform. Every month, 2.2 billion individual users log in to Facebook. + Anthony Mongeluzo is the CEO of PCS, LLC, a 100-person IT service and support company that provides managed technology solutions for organizations in the Delaware Valley. Anthony is also a partner in three other technology companies that provide cyber security, computer forensic, and web services. He is also a technology correspondent for Fox 29 Philly and is a face for small business owners on Fox National news. You can reach Anthony [email protected] or connect online with him @PCS_AnthonyM 25