Facebook: EU Data may not have been shared with Cambridge Analytica

As Bloomberg reports, Facebook said that evidence suggests that EU data may not be shared with Cambridge Analytica at all. Stephen Satterfield, a director on Facebook’s Privacy and Public Policy team told European Union lawmakers in a hearing: “The best information we have suggests that no European user data was shared by Dr. [Aleksandr] Kogan with Cambridge Analytica”. Aleksandr Kogan was the researcher who developed the app that allowed Cambridge Analytica to receive data from millions of Facebook users, which were later sold to the consulting firm working on the Donald Trump U.S. presidential campaign.

Facebook clarifies that they cannot be 100 per cent certain about this matter and that they will have to await the results of their own internal investigations, following the conclusion of the investigations of the U.K. Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) that are being undertaken at the moment. In March this year, the offices of Cambridge Analytica were investigated by the ICO amid the allegations information of Facebook’s user data was obtained without the data subject’s consents.

Richard Allen, Facebook’s vice president of policy solutions, explaining the evidences that led Facebook to the conclusion that European data may not be shared with Cambridge Analytica, said that Kogan’s contract with Cambridge Analytica instructed Kogan to collect data from Americans to be used in the political campaigns. Allan further said, that Kogan may still have collected European data, while most of the people who installed the app were Americans.

“But the data he delivered to Cambridge Analytica were the Americans’ data because that’s all they wanted,” Allan stated.

However, Facebook previously had announced that about 2.7 million Europeans may have had their data shared with Cambridge Analytica. Ursula Pachl, deputy director-general of European consumer group BEUC said: “I have to say I was a bit surprised by the statements,” by further adding, “this is a contradiction, I don’t know how it can be explained.”