The political consulting firm worked for Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign, using Facebook data to build voter profiles.
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Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg on March 2 broke his silence over the Cambridge Analytica’s data breach controversy and apologized for betraying the trust of the social media users.
“This was a major breach of trust and I’m really sorry that this happened”, Zuckerberg told CNN, reiterating a statement published on his own Facebook page earlier in the day.
UK-based data analytics firm Cambridge Analytica stands accused of using data it got from Facebook to build sophisticated psychological profiles of USA voters, and then deliver content to them that might sway their vote.
One lawsuit was filed by a Facebook user who claims the Menlo Park company acted with “absolute disregard” for her personal information after allegedly representing that it wouldn’t disclose the data without permission or notice.
The billionaire also announced a crackdown on apps used to hijack details from users after the Cambridge Analytica scandal slashed the social network’s value.
The internet entrepreneur admitted that it “was clearly a mistake” to put so much faith in an app provider and pledged to put things right in the future, namely by conducting a “full forensic audit” of any app with suspicious activity and banning any developer that refuses to comply.
Macquarie Capital analyst Benjamin Schachter wrote in a note to clients Wednesday that Zuckerberg’s apology was a positive step in restoring investor confidence. He ran a survey app and only 3,00,000 Facebook users responded to the quiz.
Since the breach, there’s been a campaign to #DeleteFacebook, but Zuckerberg says there hasn’t been a “meaningful number” of people scrapping their accounts. “Given what we know now, we clearly should have followed up, and we’re never going to make that mistake again”.
The UK’s privacy regulator, the Information Commissioner’s office, said on Monday it would request a warrant to search the offices of the political consultancy.
Fast forward a couple of years to 2013 and a Cambridge University researcher (Aleksandr Kogan) created a personality quiz app. “I’m convinced now that self-regulation is not going to work, we’re going to have to give these companies some structure”.
Last week, Facebook’s general counsel refrained from calling the incident a “data breach.” And it’s contrary to everything you have stated about the importance of protecting data, and protecting users’ data.
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The investigation by the ICO is expected to intensify after they analyze the records and data held by Cambridge Analytica.
