Scandal leads to bankruptcy for data firm

NEW YORK — Cambridge Analytica, the data company at the center of Facebook’s worst privacy scandal in history, is declaring bankruptcy and shutting down.

The London operation blamed “unfairly negative media coverage” and said it has been “vilified” for actions it said are both legal and accepted as part of online advertising.

Cambridge Analytica said it has filed papers to start insolvency proceedings in the U.K. and will seek bankruptcy protection in a federal court in New York.

“The siege of media coverage has driven away virtually all of the company’s customers and suppliers,” Cambridge Analytica said in a statement.

Facebook said it will keep looking into data misuse by Cambridge Analytica though the company is closing down. And Jeff Chester of the Center for Digital Democracy, a digital advocacy group in Washington, said criticisms of Facebook’s privacy practices won’t go away just because Cambridge Analytica has.

“Cambridge Analytica’s practices, although it crossed ethical boundaries, is really emblematic of how data-driven digital marketing occurs worldwide,” Chester said. “Rather than rejoicing that a bad actor has met its just reward, we should recognize that many more Cambridge Analytica-like companies are operating in the conjoined commercial and political marketplace.”

Cambridge Analytica, whose clients included Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, sought information on Facebook users to build psychological profiles on a large portion of the U.S. electorate.

The company was able to amass the database quickly with the help of an app that purported to be a personality test. The app collected data on tens of millions of people and their Facebook friends, even those who did not download the app themselves.