Q&A

What has happened?

Millions of Facebook users were paid by UK-based Cambridge Analytica to take a survey through app This Is Your Digital Life, featuring a personality quiz. The user, who had to be a US voter, agreed to conditions including collection of data, plus Facebook’s terms allowing friends’ data to be collected. It is alleged information was improperly gathered.

What is Cambridge Analytica?

The data analysis firm, partly owned by US billionaire Robert Mercer, mines information and uses it to help election strategists. Founded in 013, it worked on Ted Cruz and Donald Trump’s presidential campaigns. It is also said to have worked on the Leave.EU campaign. The company worked with Cambridge University professor Aleksandr Kogan via his firm Global Science Research after he developed an app that could help predict and influence voters.

What could they do with the information?

The app combined the quiz results with the user’s Facebook details to build an algorithm that could identify likely political persuasions and personality traits. After beginning the research in early 014, Dr Kogan and CA amassed a database of millions of US voters. The algorithm trawled through what each user ‘liked’ on Facebook and could use this information to target them with personalised political adverts.

What did it do wrong?

Professor Kogan had Facebook permission to harvest data from participants and friends’ accounts. But this was restricted to academic use. None of the quiz-takers agreed to their data being used for marketing tools or a vast campaign database. By using the data for commercial purposes, Dr Kogan was breaking Facebook’s rules. He may also have broken UK data protection laws against the sale or use of personal data without consent, including where consent is given for one purpose but data is used for another.

How did it come to light?

Data analytics expert Christopher Wylie decided to expose the data breach after working at CA. It has since emerged Facebook found out in late 015 that information had been harvested on an unprecedented scale. At the time, it failed to alert users, taking only limited measures to recover and secure the data. According to the New York Times, copies could still be found online.

Why is Facebook being criticised?

The breach raises questions about Facebook’s role in targeting voters during the US presidential election and the EU referendum.