- Political research firm Cambridge Analytica may have had access to private Facebook messages between 1,500 users and their friends.
- This detail was included in notifications Facebook sent out this week to the 87 million people potentially affected by the Cambridge Analytica scandal. It was not previously disclosed by Facebook.
- However, the researcher who provided the data to Cambridge Analytica, and the firm itself, denied it collected private messages.
ADVERTISEMENT
Cambridge Analytica could have accessed private Facebook messages between 1,500 users and their friends (FB)
Facebook confirmed that 1,500 users may have had their private messages shared with political research firm Cambridge Analytica.
This week, Facebook started to notify some 87 million users that Trump-linked data firm Cambridge Analytica may have misappropriated their profile data to target political ads. Those notifications also included a previously-unknown detail: That Cambridge Analytica may have had access to some users' private Facebook messages.
To be more specific, Facebook confirmed to Wired that Cambridge Analytica may have had access to messages between 1,500 users and their friends.
The whole fiasco started when a researcher named
ADVERTISEMENT
However, both Kogan and Cambridge Analytica have denied that the information was ever put to use in targeting political ads.
In an interview with The New York Times, Kogan admitted to obtaining private messages with his app, but said he never passed them along to Cambridge Analytica. The messages were used, Kogan said, for research about how
GSR did not share the conte... @ Cambridge Analytica
Heres Facebooks full statement to Business Insider:
“In 2014, Facebook’s platform policy allowed developers to request mailbox permissions but only if the person explicitly gave consent for this to happen. At the time when people provided access to their mailboxes - when Facebook messages were more of an inbox and less of a real-time messaging service - this enabled things like desktop apps that combined Facebook messages with messages from other services like SMS so that a person could access their messages all in one place. According to our records only a very small number of people explicitly opted into sharing this information. The feature was turned off in 2015.”
JOIN OUR PULSE COMMUNITY!
ADVERTISEMENT
Eyewitness? Submit your stories now via social or:
Email: eyewitness@pulse.ng
ADVERTISEMENT