Facebook has suspended a data mining firm that is said to have been used by President Uhuru Kenyatta’s party, Jubilee, in the last election.
On Friday, Facebook Inc said it was suspending Strategic Communication Laboratories (SCL), including their political data analytics firm, Cambridge Analytica.
Facebook said in a statement that it took the action after it found they had violated its policies.
Facebook said that protecting people’s information is at the heart of everything it does, and requires the same from people who operate apps on the platform.
Facebook said that protecting people’s information is at the heart of everything it does, and requires the same from people who operate apps on the platform.
“In 2015, we learned that a psychology professor at the University of Cambridge named Dr. Aleksandr Kogan lied to us and violated our Platform Policies by passing data from an app that was using Facebook Login to SCL/Cambridge Analytica, a firm that does political, government and military work around the globe. He also passed that data to Christopher Wylie of Eunoia Technologies, Inc,” the statement said.
It added that approximately 270,000 people downloaded the app.
“In so doing, they gave their consent for Kogan to access information such as the city they set on their profile, or content they had liked, as well as more limited information about friends who had their privacy settings set to allow it,” Facebook said.
Facebook added that though Cambridge Analytica, Kogan and Wylie all certified to us that they destroyed the data, it found a few days ago that not all was deleted.
