A Year Of Data Scandal

- Benjamin Kerry & Gavin Lenaghan​​​​​​​

“The truth is, we could make a ton of money if we monetized our customer – if our customer was our product. We’ve elected not to do that.” These words, quoted by Recode, were uttered by Apple CEO Tim Cook in March as he explained the privacy-first focus of his company’s business model. It’s a stance from which many other tech titans evidently could have learnt this year, with the likes of Facebook and Google having become engulfed in a quick succession of data-leaking scandals.

VEERING FROM ONE DATA CRISIS TO ANOTHER

Cook was actually speaking in an interview on the television network MSNBC in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, which shed light on perilous holes in Facebook’s security infrastructure. That scandal came to light earlier the same month, when a press investigation revealed that the now-defunct Cambridge Analytica, a UK-based consultancy associated with Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, had misused tens of thousands of Facebook users’ data.

There’s much more to say on that story, but it’s worth first pointing out that examples of extensive misuse of data by a broad range of companies have been unearthed in scarily high numbers in 2018. As recently as October, Google belatedly admitted to a worrying hole in its data security, while even companies not so firmly rooted in the tech industry – such as hotel group Marriott and sandwich chain Panera Bread – have suffered breaches of their customers’ details.