How Cambridge Analytica exploited Facebook users’ data, and why it’s a big deal
Cambridge Analytica reportedly used the data, taken without authorisation in early 2014, to build software to predict and influence choices at the ballot box
The revelation that Facebook users had their data mined and sold to political campaigns seeking to influence voters’ behaviour has had wide-ranging implications in both the US and Britain, and for the social media giant.
The company at the centre of the scandal is Cambridge Analytics, a consulting firm set up to convert the data of Facebook users into tailored psychological profiles which could then be used to target them with customised political advertisements.
Details are still emerging about how Cambridge Analytica operated but the value of “big data” has been powerfully demonstrated, creating an urgent challenge for Facebook and other tech firms.
What is Cambridge Analytica and what did they do?
Cambridge Analytica is a data analysis firm that harvested private information from more than 50 million Facebook users without permission.
According to the company’s executives, the firm has worked in more than 200 elections around the world. In 2016, it worked for Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and the Leave movement in the referendum on Britain’s membership of the European Union.
The firm’s methods were revealed by Christopher Wylie, who helped set up Cambridge Analytica and worked with an academic at Cambridge University to obtain the data. He blew the whistle by revealing the system could profile individual voters to target them with personalised political advertisements.