The Observer: Facebook Profiles Harvested

A whistleblower has exposed how Cambridge Analytica, a data analysis firm, relied on a software program and Facebook user profiles to target voters with political advertisements. The number represents about a quarter of the US electorate. “Documents seen by the Observer, and confirmed by a Facebook statement, show that by late 2015 the company had found out that information had been harvested on an unprecedented scale,” report Carole Cadwalladr and Emma Graham-Harrison for the Observer, sister publication of the Guardian. “However, at the time it failed to alert users and took only limited steps to recover and secure the private information.” Global Science Research and Cambridge Analytical teamed up to pay users to take a personality test with an app called thisisyourdigitallife and allow their data be collected for academic use. But the app also collected data from the users’ friends, a violation of Facebook policy. Facebook knew about the data breach for two years but did not warn users as required by most US states. US and British agencies are investigating the role of both companies in the 2016 US presidential election and the British referendum for exiting the EU, and both nations could consider more regulations for online political advertising. – YaleGlobal