Warehouse linked to data firm
Cambridge Analytica services not ‘remotely similar’ to overseas
The Warehouse Group has confirmed it has links with the data firm at the centre of an international scandal involving the misuse of Facebook users’ personal information.
“Cambridge Analytica’s parent company has conducted some standard market segmentation and research,” a Warehouse spokesperson told the Herald after sources revealed the link.
The spokesperson said local customer data was not at risk of alleged misuse similar to that which occurred internationally. Cambridge Analytica had not provided the Warehouse with services “remotely similar” to those in the news overseas.
“None of our customer data has been shared with them [Cambridge Analytica]. We comply with NZ privacy laws and in accordance with our privacy policy.” The spokesperson added that the Warehouse takes data security “very seriously”.
“We collect and hold customer data only to provide the best products and services we can and to respond to customer requests. We do not pass it on to anyone else or use it in any other way without customer consent.”
Cambridge Analytica has faced massive scrutiny this week, following reports in the New York Times and the Guardian that the data firm used information gleaned from Facebook users to build psychographic profiles of tens of millions of people in its work for the Donald Trump presidential campaign.
This information was harvested via a personality test app, which asked seemingly innocuous questions not dissimilar from those often presented on Facebook quizzes.
Christopher Wylie, who worked with a Cambridge University academic to obtain the data, was quoted in the Guardian saying: “We exploited Facebook to harvest millions of people’s profiles. And built models to exploit what we knew about them and target their inner demons. That was the basis the entire company was built on.”
After the hard-hitting report, Facebook insisted the Cambridge data collection was not a “data breach” because “everyone involved gave their consent” to share their data.
The purported research app followed Facebook’s existing privacy rules. The scandal overseas has had a major impact on Facebook, leading to a 7 per cent drop in the company’s stock price.
Facebook is also facing regulatory action, with Britain’s information commissioner saying she is using all her legal powers to investigate the handling of millions of people’s personal Facebook data by the social media giant and by political campaign consultants Cambridge Analytica.
Advertising executive Paul Catmur this week told the Herald the data practices employed by Cambridge Analytica were commonplace among data firms working in marketing. “They’re selling baked beans like they’re selling politicians,” said Catmur, who works as the chief executive at Barnes, Catmur & Friends Dentsu.
There have also been calls for data laws in New Zealand to evolve to better protect consumers.
Barry Brailey, a cybersecurity specialist at Aura Information Security, would welcome the introduction of similar laws in New Zealand.
“When someone else holds something of yours that is valuable, they have a duty to look after it,” he said.
“They also have a duty to let you know if something happens to it.”
None of our customer data has been shared with them. Warehouse spokesperson
How did it start?
Cambridge Analytica is an offshoot of SCL Group, a US government and military contractor that says it works on everything from food security research to counternarcotics to political campaigns. SCL was founded more than 25 years ago, according to its website. Cambridge Analytica was created around 2013 initially with a focus on US elections, with US$15 million ($20.8m) in backing from billionaire Republican donor Robert Mercer.
What does it do?
Cambridge Analytica markets itself as providing consumer research, targeted advertising and other data-related services to both political and corporate clients. It does not list its corporate clients but on its website describes them as including a daily newspaper that wanted to know more about its subscribers, a women’s clothing brand that sought research on its customers and a US auto insurer interested in marketing itself. Britain’s Channel 4 News reported yesterday, based on secretly recorded video, that Cambridge Analytica secretly stagemanaged Kenya President Uhuru Kenyatta’s campaigns in the hotly contested 2013 and 2017 elections. Cambridge Analytica denied the report.
When did it first get attention?
After Trump won the White House in 2016, in part with the firm’s help, Cambridge Analytica CEO Alexander Nix went to more clients to pitch his services, the New York Times reported last year. The company boasted it could develop psychological profiles of consumers and voters which was a “secret sauce” it used to sway them more effectively than traditional advertising could.
What is it accused of?
Cambridge Analytica beginning in 2014 obtained data on 50 million Facebook users via means that deceived both the users and Facebook, the New York Times and the Observer reported at the weekend. The data was harvested by an application developed by a British academic, Aleksandr Kogan, the newspapers said. Some 270,000 people downloaded the application and logged in with their Facebook credentials, according to Facebook. The application gathered their data and data about their friends, and then Kogan passed the data to Cambridge Analytica, according to both Cambridge Analytica and Facebook. Cambridge Analytica said on Sunday that it did not initially know Kogan violated Facebook’s terms, and that it deleted the data once it found out in 2015. Kogan could not be reached for comment. The data, though, was not deleted, the two newspapers reported. Cambridge Analytica said that the allegation was not true. Facebook said it was investigating to verify the accuracy of the claim.