BJP, Cong. trade charges over use of data analytics firm

BJP, Cong. trade charges over use of data analytics firm

Context

Days after data analytics firm Cambridge Analytica (CA), a subsidiary of the U.K.-based SCL Group, was suspended by social media company Facebook for not deleting user data obtained from an app developer for the platform, the controversy reached Indian shores with both the BJP and the Congress trading charges of the other having used the firm’s services

What is Cambridge Analytica?

Cambridge Analytica (CA) is a UK-based data analytics firm, whose parent company is Strategic Communication Laboratories (SCL). It claims to build psychological profiles of voters to help its clients win elections

Accusation against CA

• The company is accused of buying millions of Americans’ data from a researcher who told Facebook he was collecting it strictly for academic purposes
• It then tapped that data to build psychographic profiles of users and their friends, which were utilized for targeted political ads in the UK’s Brexit referendum campaign, as well as by Trump’s team during the 2016 US election

The Breach

• Facebook allowed Aleksandr Kogan, a psychology professor at the University of Cambridge who owns a company called Global Science Research, to harvest data from users who downloaded his app (thisisyourdigitallife)
• The app asked users to log in using their Facebook account. As part of the login process, it asked for access to users’ Facebook profiles, locations, what they liked on the service
• The problem was that Facebook users who agreed to give their information to Kogan’s app also gave up permission to harvest data on all their Facebook friends as well
• The breach occurred when Kogan then sold this data to Cambridge Analytica, which is against Facebook’s rules. Facebook says it has since changed the way it allows researchers to collect data from the platform as a result