Facebook founder to be asked to appear before MPs

FACEBOOK FOUNDER Mark Zuckerberg will be asked to give evidence at a Commons committee examining allegations of unauthorised sharing of Facebook user data, an MP has said.

Damian Collins, chair of the digital, culture, media and sport (DCMS) committee, said the Facebook chief executive must provide answers after an investigation alleged Cambridge Analytica, a British political campaigns firm, acquired and kept information about users.

“Data has been taken from Facebook users without their consent, and was then processed by a third party and used to support their campaigns,” Mr Collins wrote on the House of Commons website.

“I will be writing to Mark Zuckerberg asking that either he, or another senior executive from the company, appear to give evidence in front of the Committee as part of our inquiry.”

Mr Collins said Alexander Nix, the chief executive of Cambridge Analytica, had “deliberately mislead” the DCMS committee by denying his company had received information from data collection firm Global Science Research (GSR).

An investigation found GSR, which is owned by Cambridge University academic Aleksandr Kogan, collected information on up to 50m people through a personality-testing app.

Hundreds of thousands gave permission for their data to be collected for academic use by the app, but it also collected information about their Facebook friends, reports found.

The Information Commissioner’s Officer said it would investigate the potential breach.

Cambridge Analytica said it fully complied with Facebook’s terms of services.

The social media giant said it had suspended the firm on suspicion it had flouted privacy rules.