Cambridge Analytica was a political consulting firm that came under scrutiny after obtaining personal information from millions of Facebook users without proper authorisation and using the data for targeted political advertising. The controversy was particularly linked to the 2016 US presidential election and the Brexit referendum.
Investigations revealed that the company acquired user data through a personality quiz application called “thisisyourdigitallife”. The app was initially accessed by around 270,000 users, but its data collection extended to their Facebook friends, eventually affecting an estimated 87 million users worldwide.
Facebook had learned in December 2015 that Cambridge Analytica had obtained the data. However, the company did not publicly disclose the matter until April 2018, following revelations by a whistleblower.
The disclosure triggered widespread criticism and a major political and privacy scandal, intensifying scrutiny of Facebook’s handling of user data and the use of personal information for political advertising.
