Trump Consultant Behind Massive Facebook Data Leak

Cambridge Analytica got data of over 50M Facebook users without their permission
By Michael Harthorne,  Newser Staff
Posted Mar 17, 2018 11:56 AM CDT
Updated Mar 18, 2018 9:13 AM CDT
Trump Consultant Behind Massive Facebook Data Leak
Facebook suspended Cambridge Analytica, a data-analysis firm that worked for President Trump's 2016 campaign, over allegations that it held onto improperly obtained user data after telling Facebook it had deleted the information.   (AP Photo/Matt Rourke, File)

A voter-profiling company used by the 2016 Trump campaign collected the private data of over 50 million Facebook users without their permission—one of the biggest data leaks in Facebook history, the New York Times reports. According to the Guardian, it started with researchers concluding they could form complex personality profiles of people by what they "like" on Facebook, determining intelligence, history of trauma, and more based on responses to posts on innocuous subjects like curly fries and Hello Kitty. Researcher Aleksandr Kogan signed a deal with Cambridge Analytica—which had Stephen Bannon in a leading role—and in 2014 developed a personality quiz that would not only harvest the data of the Facebook users who took it but also all of their friends.

Around 270,000 Facebook users took the quiz—agreeing to allow their data to be used for academic purposes; their friends didn't even agree to that—which allowed Kogan to harvest the data of over 50 million Facebook users and pass it along to Cambridge Analytica in violation of Facebook policies. The company used it to create psychographic profiles of about 30 million US voters and target political ads toward them. Facebook found out in 2015 and demanded the data be deleted, Quartz reports. But Facebook didn't publicly acknowledge the leak until Friday and, despite claims to the contrary, it appears Cambridge Analyitica still has a good portion of the data. Cambridge Analytica, which has now been banned by Facebook, is also facing the possibility of having run afoul of US election laws and is being looked into by the Mueller investigation. (More Facebook stories.)

Get the news faster.
Tap to install our app.
X
Install the Newser News app
in two easy steps:
1. Tap in your navigation bar.
2. Tap to Add to Home Screen.

X