I have previously written about the importance of a privacy program to in part, manage trust between an organization and its customers. As more data breaches occur and privacy is made more of an issue that is embraced and examined by the general public, this trust will become more important. One example of this is the evolving situation at Facebook.
It seems every day a new headline is running about what Mark Zuckerberg has said or how many individuals were affected by the breach at Facebook. Many individuals are deleting their accounts, I myself have removed the application from my phone. The fact is that people are now deleting their accounts. This shows that they no longer trust Facebook or find the tradeoff of their personal privacy for access to their wall unappealing.
Moreover, is the previously mentioned head of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg. It seems that while he is trying to apologize he cannot help but show that things are much worse than previously known. Originally it was 50 million effects, now it is 87 million. It is clear, at least in the public’s mind, that while Cambridge Analytica was the group taking all the data, Facebook was the responsible party. Imagine leaving your pet at the vet overnight, trusting them to care for your pet, only to find out that they let someone come in to test products on them without even batting an eye.
The public outlook is that Facebook looked the other way while Cambridge Analytica and other companies looted and pillaged our personal information. Now that this trust has been trashed, many are calling for action. Congress is taking action against Facebook, calling Zuckerberg to testify the after this blog was written. Now that social media has proven it cannot be trusted to follow their own rules, new rules may be set for them.