FB user data in EU likely untouched
luxembourg — Facebook said private data about its European users may not have fallen into the hands of Cambridge Analytica after all, as the social network continues to fend off criticism about a scandal that sparked global outrage.
“The best information we have suggests that no European user data was shared by Dr [Aleksandr] Kogan with Cambridge Analytica,” Stephen Satterfield, a privacy policy director at Facebook, told European Union lawmakers at a hearing on Monday.
He referred to the researcher who collected users’ information and subsequently sold it to the consulting firm that worked on Donald Trump’s 2016 US presidential campaign.
Facebook said it wouldn’t be able to make any firm conclusions on the matter until it conducts its own audit, which it plans to do once it receives the go-ahead from the UK’s privacy watchdog currently conducting its own probe. The social network said it based its preliminary conclusion on testimony by Kogan, as well as contracts Kogan’s company GSR had with Cambridge, along with its own internal analysis.
The US tech giant previously told the EU that the data of as many as 2.7 million Europeans might have been shared with Cambridge. The company has previously notified users whose data was potentially accessed by Kogan’s app — even if their data might not have been improperly shared with Cambridge Analytica.
Contradiction
“I have to say I was a bit surprised by the statements,” Ursula Pachl, deputy director-general of European consumer group BEUC told the parliament. “This is a contradiction, I don’t know how it can be explained.”
The EU’s top privacy regulator also chided the company for its apparent flip-flopping.
“What really is concerning is that there are revelations and then Facebook admits having shared data of users and even non-users, and after each revelation, they admit another thing,” Andrea Jelinek, who is leading the authorities in charge of policing EU data privacy law, told the Parliament’s civil liberties committee in Brussels on Monday. — Bloomberg