Hacked

Facebook Data Leak “Much Greater Than 87 Million,” New Whistleblower Reveals

While numerous concerns had been raised over the uninformed data collection of over 87 million Facebook users, the actual number of people affected may be far more.

The CA data breach came to light when the company’s former director of research Christopher Wylie took charge and went into Edward Snowden-mode to break the news. It resulted in Facebook losing loads of money and its CEO testifying before the US Congress.

Britain’s Digital, Culture, Media, and Sport Committee (DCMSC) has been conducting an inquiry into the CA scandal and fake news. Now, another whistleblower has dropped more details.

As per a written testimony by Brittany Kaiser, who was a Cambridge Analytica’s Business Development Director until last month, the company used many questionnaires to harvest user data.

Alexander Kogan’s app “Thisisyourdigitallife” and dataset weren’t the only Facebook connected dataset and questionnaire used by Cambridge Analytica. Kaiser said that the Facebook-related data was one of CA’s sales and marketing “pitch” in front of its political, commercial, and defense clients.

She named one of the quizzes as “sex compass” but said she doesn’t know specific details of such surveys and how the data was acquired and processed.

“I am aware in a general sense of a wide range of surveys which were done by CA or its partners, usually with a Facebook login,” Kaiser told the Committee.

“But I believe it is almost certain that the number of Facebook users whose data was compromised through routes similar to that used by Kogan is much greater than 87 million,” she added. “And that both Cambridge Analytica and other unconnected companies and campaigns were involved in these activities.

Putting a Facebook login option fulfills the prime intention behind these quizzes: getting access to Facebook users’ information. “I believe that was the point of the quizzes in the first place, yes,” Kaiser replied when asked by DCMSC Chairman Damian Collins.

Via Business Insider

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