What was Cambridge Analytica Scandal

1. Presented By-
Group 7

2. Cambridge Analytica is a company that offers services to
businesses and political parties who want to “change
audience behavior”.
It claims to be able to analyze huge amounts of consumer
data and combine that with behavioral science to identify
people who organizations can target with marketing material.
It collects data from a wide range of sources, including social
media platforms.

3.  Cambridge Analytica, a data analytics company, managed to harvest data from
Facebook users.
 This was used to build psychological profiles of more than 50 million individuals.
 A whistle-blower has uncovered it all, highlighting the commercial nexus between
Analytica and US politicians.
 This was particularly in relation with predicting and shaping voting preferences.
 A company called Global Science Research (GSR) used a personality App with the
permission of Facebook, for supposedly academic research purposes.
 With the help of this, a psychology lecturer at Cambridge University managed to
harvest data.
 Data of millions of FB subscribers who used the personality App was sold for
presidential campaign.

4. What Really Happened
2010
• Facebook launches the first version of Open Graph API, which allows
outside developers to access user data.
2013
• A Cambridge University professor Alexandar Kogan created an app
called ‘ThisisyourDigitalLife’ which was used by 3 Lakh users on
Facebook.
2014
• Facebook changes rules for apps on data sharing.

5. 2015
• Kogan sold all the user data to Cambridge Analytica for
$800000.
DEC
2015
• Guardian reports on user data being used Cambridge Analytica.
2018
• Whistleblower Christopher Wylie revealed how data of over 50
million users was gained from the.

6.  The entire business model around personalized advertising requires access to
more and more user information.
 Some of these activities could be legitimate but it needs to be clearly defined
and communicated to the users.
 The data breach at Facebook is a wake-up call for technology companies,
policymakers and consumers of data services.
 These companies must create awareness about data protection.
 This should be backed up with strong data protection laws that impose heavy
penalties on violators.
 In all, the scandal calls for tech companies to draw a healthy balance between
winning clients and the expenditure involved in nursing privacy and protecting
data.