Cambridge Analytica harvested personal data from more than 50 million Facebook users without their consent by creating a personality quiz app. This data was then used to build psychological profiles of individuals to target them with political advertising, particularly for presidential campaigns. A whistleblower revealed that Cambridge Analytica had acquired and used this data commercially, highlighting issues around how personal data is collected and used without users' knowledge by data analytics companies.

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.