eDiscovery Daily Blog

Facebook Finally Reveals the Full Extent of the Cambridge Analytica Breach: Cybersecurity Trends

When I see news stories related to eDiscovery, cybersecurity or data privacy that I think would be of interest to our readers, it seems appropriate to share those stories here on this blog.  And this story is no exception.  It appears we finally now fully understand the extent of the Facebook/Cambridge Analytica breach from a few years ago.

According to the DailyER (Facebook relieved to discover data breached was just millions of minion memes, written by Chris Goehring), a newly released report confirmed the only data Cambridge Analytica accessed during the U.S. presidential campaign season a few years ago from 50 million Facebook users was millions of minion memes.

As you may recall, minion memes gained popularity on Facebook after the first Despicable Me movie was released in 2010.  Three years later, the popularity of minions was extended with the sequel Despicable Me 2 – sadly, it wasn’t until 2015 that the minions got their own movie, appropriately titled Minions.

A typical minion meme features one or more minions, which are goofy yellow characters from the movies who speak in gibberish, along with a funny saying in the background that is relatable to a group of people in some way. Here are some examples in a photo with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg:

The minion memes have been a hit among suburban moms who constantly share the memes on their Facebook pages.

“I can’t believe someone stole all my funny minion memes!” exclaimed Lincoln, NE native Sharon Smith, mother of two loving children and grandmother to three grandchildren. “I can’t believe Facebook would let hackers access my data! If they let those hackers take any of my personal information, I’m gonna dab on those haters, LOL! Watch me whip and nae-nae!”

According to the article, Zuckerberg spoke about the scandal in a recent press release.

“Thank God they didn’t take any sensitive information,” said Zuckerberg. “This really could have been a huge disaster. What a relief it is they only took the minion memes. Hopefully, they don’t find the millions of credit card numbers I put on Craigslist last night. Now THAT would be a disaster.”

As they used to say in the old days, “that’s all the news that’s fit to print” on this, the first day of April, 2019.  ;o)

So, what do you think?  Did you have any minion memes on Facebook during this time?  Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

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