Australians naive about how social media giants use their personal data: investigation chief

CANBERRA, April 3 (Xinhua) -- The head of Australia's world-first investigation into digital giants such as Facebook and Google has accused Australians of being ignorant about the extent of personal data held by these online entities.

Rod Sims, chairman of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC), said the public's shock at the Cambridge Analytica scandal in March confirmed what he had long suspected that Australian consumers knew surprisingly little about the potential of social media giants and search engines to access and harvest their personal information.

The ACCC is currently waiting on submissions as it prepares to investigate the digital giants in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica data-mining revelations, which involved the personal information of more than 50 million users worldwide being compromised.

Its inquiry is investigating the impact of Google, content aggregators such as Apple News and social media platforms such as Facebook on the state of competition in media and advertising.

Sims said in his experience, customers rarely read lengthy terms and conditions when signing up with these social media giants.

"I think with Facebook, Google, the other platform companies, they do a better job than other companies at trying to convince you they're not in business to make money," he told Fairfax Media in comments published on Tuesday.

"Whereas, quite visibly, they are and I think you have to give them their credit, they've come up with a very clever business model - give you a service ... you're paying (for) with your data."

The April 3 deadline is expected to pass without any submissions from major media companies, as most have asked for extensions following the Cambridge Analytica revelations which emerged on March 18.

The Guardian published the account of a former worker at data firm Cambridge Analytica, revealing that a third-party application on Facebook scraped profile information from users and their friends, which was then used to target voters for Donald Trump's presidential campaign in the United States.

Sims told Guardian Australia that the commission is trying to "understand what is going to help from a competition and consumer point of view."

"I think the reaction to Cambridge Analytica (revelations) indicated a lot of people don't understand the data that's held on them and potentially what it can be used for," he said.

"Ours is very much an analytical exercise ... we will engage with people and we certainly will hold public forums. But we are really trying to hear perspectives.

"We'll be looking at a range of competition, consumer and level-playing-field type issues. But then we'll be looking at what the impact of this is on the media, understanding very much the role that media and journalism play in society." Enditem