According to information, a Cambridge Analytica data collection company has collected private information from more than 50 million users of Facebook in developing techniques to benefit President Donald Trump's election campaign on 2016.
At the center of the issue is Christopher Wylie, the American marketer who created what he called a true "psychological warfare" tool for data use and the power of social networks to manipulate public opinion. His two biggest cases of success were the election of Donald Trump to the presidency of the United States and the campaign for the United Kingdom to leave the European Union, decided by referendum held that same year.
Newspapers, quoting former employees, associates and documents from Cambridge Analytica, said the data breach was one of the biggest in Facebook's history.
Meanwhile, Facebook has announced the suspension of Cambridge Analytica's platform because of improper use of private data of social network users. For years, the company has kept sensitive information about the users and acquired them without users' consent.
The more than 50 million profiles represented about a third of North America's active users and about a quarter of potential US voters at the time. Facebook reportedly discovered the issue in 2015 and asked companies to delete the data, without checking whether it really happened when the response was positive. Only now, through reports published in the international press, did I learn that the data of its users continued to be used in an irregular manner.
Cambridge Analytica says the data in question was deleted when Facebook asked, but according to American newspapers it did not. The company says it is working with Facebook to solve the problem.
