Cambridge Analytica and Facebook under investigation

As Bloomberg reports, the offices of Cambridge Analytica were investigated by the U.K. Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) amid allegations that information of millions of Facebook’s users data was obtained without the data subject’s consents. Personal information from about 50 million people should be affected because 270.000 Facebook user should have used a personality-analysis app, which should not only have the permission to enter the users’ data, but also those of the users’ friends.

According to the ICO, the investigation should be a part of a larger look into “the use of personal data and analytics by political campaigns, parties, social media companies and other commercial actors”.

Facebook, because of this revelation not only lost a significant amount of its stock shares. As Forbes reports, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) confirmed the launch of an own investigation against Facebook. It is said that according to Tom Pahl, the director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, the “FTC takes very seriously recent press reports raising substantial concerns about the privacy practices of Facebook” and that “the FTC is confirming that it has an open non-public investigation into these practices.”