On the heels of a historic $5 billion fine against Facebook for privacy missteps, the Federal Trade Commission is suing data consulting firm Cambridge Analytica over the tactics it employed to harvest personal data from the social media giant’s users.
The FTC filed an administrative complaint Wednesday that seeks to hold Cambridge Analytica, which worked on Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, responsible for “deceptive acts and practices” to collect consumer information for targeted advertising.
The panel also reached settlements with Alexander Nix, former CEO of Cambridge Analytica, and Aleksandr Kogan, who developed the Facebook app used by Cambridge Analytica that harvested data from millions of users.
The actions were announced alongside the agency’s settlement with Facebook, which stemmed from a year-long investigation into whether the tech giant violated a 2012 consent decree by using deceptive practices that left consumers unaware Facebook was sharing their personal data with third-party apps.
The review began after the disclosure of Cambridge Analytica’s data-gathering through the GSRApp, also referred to as “thisisyourdigitallife,” which was billed as a personality quiz. The software collected information from its users as well as their Facebook connections, including their “likes” of public Facebook pages.
In all, the FTC said profile data was harvested from up to 270,000 Facebook users, as well as up to 65 million of their Facebook friends, including at least 30 million U.S. consumers.
Kogan and Cambridge Analytica analyzed data collected by the app in 2014, using it to train an algorithm that came up with personality scores for the app’s users as well as their Facebook friends. Those scores were then matched with U.S. voter records and used for profiling and targeted advertising, the FTC said.
The panel accused Cambridge Analytica, Nix and Kogan of falsely claiming the app didn’t collect identifiable information from Facebook users. Under the proposed settlement with the FTC, Kogan and Nix are required to destroy any personal information gathered through the GSRApp and any related work that came from the data. They’re also barred from making false or deceptive statements about personal information.
Cambridge Analytica filed for bankruptcy in May 2018 and has not settled the FTC’s allegations.
