Facebook and Cambridge Analytica: Here’s how to check if your account has been hacked

The accounts violated by the collection of data through the app ” This is your digital life ” could be at least 214 thousand and not 57 as first Facebook would have outlined. A number that could be destined to grow, above all, to clarify the Personal Data Protection Authority, Antonello Soro, who in the last hours is taking stock of the Italian question and not only with colleagues in Europe. Facebook and Cambridge Analytica is now on everyone’s lips and the misuse of personal data of users registered on the social network has become an international issue with incredible numbers.

What happened between Facebook and Cambridge Analytica?

Between 2013 and 2015 an American psychologist and mathematician, Aleksandr Kogan, a researcher in Cambridge and owner of Global Science Research decided to externalize an internal application to Facebook called ” This is your digital life ” with the intent of creating a collection data for a university research.

A quiz about their digital personality as many people run on the web but that allow users to acquire personal data through access to Facebook. A legal thing until 2014 when Mark Zuckerberg and his Social Network introduces the prohibition for third-party developers to acquire personal data and especially ” resell them ” to others without user authorization.

Here the amount of information is instead sold to a British company Strategic Communication Laboratories for political purposes by Cambridge Analytica. A passage forbidden by the rules of Facebook but seems to have been discovered long ago but never really blocked by Mark Zuckerberg and his workers. And it is this that is contested right to the Social Network and its founder: not to have informed in due course the users of what was happening to trust the false certifications of Cambridge Analytica that had not destroyed any sensitive data.

How to check if the account has been hacked?

At this point, it is clear to understand if really the account that we usually use has been hacked or if our data are still safe. To know this, Facebook has provided a link to this page where you can go to get information on the violation or not of the account. A first step that will allow anyone, writing on Facebook, to understand if there has been or not ” tampering ” of their profile by Cambridge Analytica.

If positive, that is, if you have not been ” violated “, in addition to breathing a sigh of relief, we recommend, as the social network is doing, to check in your page of applications on Facebook, which have access to your data but above all to remove those that have not been used for a long time or that may have doubts. Given the precedents: ” prevention is better than cure “.

Facebook is already acting in a transparent manner by sending a notification to all those who have been somehow included in the Cambridge Analytica lists. This will inform users that their data has been used by a political marketing company without their consent and without their knowledge. In this case, nothing can be done by users who will still be notified. In addition to this all users, even those who have not suffered any violation, will be notified via a message of the affair and will be pushed to deal better and more aware of the applications in Facebook, and of the services connected to them.