To date, the media and government have been focusing on private sector use of consumer information. However, as indicated in a recent article by The New York Times, universities have been harvesting huge amounts of consumer information for academic purposes, and are not necessarily following strict protocols for protecting this data - in some cases, The New York Times found that the data was left unsecured and on open servers.
Their practices came to light in March when The New York Times and The Observer of London reported that Aleksandr Kogan, a University of Cambridge psychology professor, had obtained the data of up to 87 million Facebook users through a quiz app. ... But while what happened with Mr. Kogan’s Facebook data set is now known, the fate of other information hoards is murkier. In many cases, the data was used for research or scholarly articles. The information was then sometimes left unsecured and stored on open servers that offered access to anyone. Some academics said the data could have been easily copied and sold to marketers or political consulting firms. The potential result is more leakage of Facebook users’ information through academic circles...
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/06/technology/facebook-information-data-sets-academics.html
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