Project idea 2- Body

 Data protection- Breaking the Law. 

Force Entry 

After Yahoo big scandal in 2013 and 2014, the FBI( Federal Bureau of Investigation) took three years to identify the four people responsible for the attack and was discovered that two of the men in the attack were Russians spies, FBI explained how the attack happened in a statement:"  The hack began with a spear-phishing email sent in early 2014 to a Yahoo company employee. It's unclear how many employees were targeted and how many emails were sent, but it only takes one person to click on a link. It happened.".(Williams, 2020)

The FBI also found out what they were after: "So he wouldn't lose access, he installed a backdoor on a Yahoo server that would allow him access, and in December he stole a backup copy of Yahoo's user database and transferred it to his own computer. The database contained names, phone numbers, password challenge questions and answers and, crucially, password recovery emails and a cryptographic value unique to each account. It's those last two items that enabled Belan and fellow commercial hacker Karim Baratov to target and access the accounts of certain users requested by the Russian agents, Dmitry Dokuchaev and Igor Sushchin." it was clear that the attack was to extract specific information, however, as cover-up they sold users information in the dark web so it would look like just another breach. (Williams, 2020)

Since the attack, Yahoo has been sold. They have improved their security but also says that there is no need of the user to change the password as they have got that under control. These attacks have opened the eyes of  "black hacker" as following Yahoo attacks a large number of companies had their database breached into.

 Making a profit 

In 2018 Christopher Wylie, a former employee from Cambridge Analytica, came forward and exposed the companies Facebook, Cambridge Analytics and then to be President Donald Trump for harvesting people personal data and using against them. Cambridge Analytica was gathering personal data and creating profiles so they could sell to create a physiological and demographic profile without the person consent, Cambridge Analytica used an app collected to data through a series of questions and collecting personal data from users from Facebook and their friends. Once they had this data, they sold this information to Ted Cruz and Donald Trump campaign back in 2013. 

Even though  Facebook did not have an active part in this scandal, FTC(Federal Trade Commission) saw an issue in this matter, and that was the fact of how much of data that Facebook has on their user. Facebook had to come clean and show all the data that they keep on their users and not only use people with digital trace as well, as it came to the truth Facebook had "Shadow Profile" on users that did not have a page with them but they had their data in their database. 

Facebook got fined fifty billion and had to make every data that they had on their user and friends available to their owners, and if requested, have to be deleted.

Reference:

En.wikipedia.org. 2020. Facebook–Cambridge Analytica Data Scandal. [online] Available at: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook%E2%80%93Cambridge_Analytica_data_scandal> [Accessed 1 November 2020].

Cadwalladr, C. and Graham-Harrison, E., 2020. Facebook And Cambridge Analytica Face Mounting Pressure Over Data Scandal. [online] the Guardian. Available at: <https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/mar/18/cambridge-analytica-and-facebook-accused-of-misleading-mps-over-data-breach> [Accessed 1 November 2020].

The Verge. 2020. The Cambridge Analytica Scandal. [online] Available at: <https://www.theverge.com/2018/4/10/17165130/facebook-cambridge-analytica-scandal> [Accessed 1 November 2020].