Facebook — Data Breach

majorAnti-PrivacyNov 1, 2013 → Mar 17, 2018Data Breach

Executive Summary

The Guardian and NYT simultaneously revealed that Cambridge Analytica had harvested data from up to 87 million Facebook profiles to build psychographic voter profiles used in the 2016 US election and Brexit. Facebook lost over $100 billion in market cap. The FTC, FBI, SEC, and DOJ all opened investigations. Zuckerberg testified before Congress on April 10, 2018.

Post LinkedIn Reddit Email

data-collection third-party-sharing user-rights enforcement

What Happened

In March 2018, The Guardian and The New York Times revealed that Cambridge Analytica harvested personal data from up to 87 million Facebook profiles without informed consent. The data was collected through an app called 'This Is Your Digital Life' developed by data scientist Aleksandr Kogan in 2013, which gathered information not only from app users but also from their Facebook friends via Facebook's Open Graph platform. Cambridge Analytica used this data to build psychological profiles and target voters with personalized political advertisements during the 2016 US presidential election campaigns of Ted Cruz and Donald Trump. Facebook knew by late 2015 that data had been harvested on an unprecedented scale but failed to alert users and took only limited steps to secure the private infor...

Who Is Affected

Up to 87 million Facebook users had their personal data harvested, primarily affecting US voters who were targeted with personalized political advertisements. The data collection extended beyond those who directly used the app to include their Facebook friends, meaning many affected users never consented to or were aware of the data harvesting.

Why It Matters

This incident represents one of Facebook's biggest ever data breaches and demonstrated how personal data could be exploited for political influence without user knowledge or consent. Facebook's market value dropped by over $100 billion, and the FTC, FBI, SEC, and DOJ all opened investigations, ultimately resulting in a $5 billion FTC fine in July 2019 and a £500,000 fine from the UK Information Commissioner's Office in October 2019. The scandal led to CEO Mark Zuckerberg testifying before Congress in April 2018 and raised fundamental questions about social media platforms' responsibilities in protecting user data and preventing its misuse for political manipulation.

AI-Assisted

Event summaries are generated by Claude AI from verified sources and reviewed by humans before publication.

Sources

Related Events