US Rules Cambridge Analytica Deceived Facebook Users To Profile Voters

Cambridge Analytica, the political consulting firm hired by the 2016 Trump presidential campaign, compiled millions of individual voter profiles by deceiving Facebook users about the company's privacy practices, the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) said in a finding released on Friday

WASHINGTON (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 06th December, 2019) Cambridge Analytica, the political consulting firm hired by the 2016 Trump presidential campaign, compiled millions of individual voter profiles by deceiving Facebook users about the company's privacy practices, the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) said in a finding released on Friday.

"The Commission found that Cambridge Analytica violated the FTC Act through the deceptive conduct," the FTC said.

The company harvested data from between 50 million and 87 million Facebook users and friends to help create political ads for the Trump campaign by targeting based on psychological profiles created with the data.

The FTC also said Cambridge Analytica misled Facebook users by falsely claiming it participated in the EU-US Privacy Shield- which allows companies to transfer consumer data legally from European Union countries to the United States.

The FTC finding included an order prohibiting Cambridge Analytica from making future misrepresentations of its privacy practices and also requires the company to participate in the EU-US Privacy Shield framework.

The impact of the FTC action remains unclear since the company declared bankruptcy and went out of business following the Facebook scandal.