Data company Cambridge Analytica (CA) has been suspended by Facebook (FB) for improperly accessing data in 2014 via the app, thisisyourdigitallife. Hundreds of thousands of users were paid to take a personality test in-app and agreed to have their data collected for academic use. FB’s “platform policy” allowed only collection of friends’ data and barred it being sold on or used for advertising.
The policy didn’t work. The app also collected the information of the test-takers’ Facebook friends, leading to the accumulation of a data pool tens of millions-strong.
Urgent new questions are now being raised concerning FB’s role in the 2016 US Presidential election, CA’s role in the EU referendum and overall, where is the oversight concerning data ownership and privacy?
