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Bill Kelly: Naive Facebook users share the blame

Facebook Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg speaks on stage during the annual Facebook F8 developers conference in San Jose, California, U.S., April 18, 2017.
Facebook Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg speaks on stage during the annual Facebook F8 developers conference in San Jose, California, U.S., April 18, 2017. REUTERS/Stephen Lam

We are rightfully outraged by the security breach with Facebook with the admission that the personal information of millions of Facebook users was accessed by Cambridge Analytica and sold to political organizations.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has apologized profusely and he will likely have some uncomfortable moments in front of investigative committees over the next few months. But as we wag our finger at Facebook and Cambridge Analytica, we also need to blame the people who supplied all that data to Facebook, and that would be us.

For years, Facebook users have been willingly and naively providing all kinds of personal information about themselves, and for years, Facebook has been making all of that personal information available to commercial interests.

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With that treasure trove of personal information about each other, it was inevitable that political parties would want access to that data, and now we discover that not only have they been using Facebook data for years, but they continue to use it today.

If that makes you angry, you should know that apparently, you acknowledged that Facebook would be sharing your information when you signed on way back when, but then, who reads the small print in those agreements, right?

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So, continue to be outraged, but if you don’t want Facebook to share your personal information with data collection agencies, don’t give it to them in the first place.

Bill Kelly is the host of Bill Kelly Show on AM 900 CHML and a commentator for Global News

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