Trump’s campaign team used stolen Facebook data, ex-employee of Cambridge Analytica says

As investigation into Russia influence in the last staged US presidential elections deepens, an ex- Cambridge Analytica employee has accused his former employers of mishandling the personal information of more than 50 million Facebook users in an effort to help Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.

Christopher Wylie, who helped found Cambridge Analytica and worked there until late 2014, told ABC News the company would use the information, including Facebook users’ hometowns, friends and “likes” to influence the behaviour of potential voters.

“Cambridge Analytica will try to pick at whatever mental weakness or vulnerability that we think you have and try to warp your perception of what’s real around you,” Wylie told ABC News in the interview. “If you are looking to create an information weapon, the battle space you operate in is social media. That is where the fight happens.”

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Two days ago, Facebook suspended Cambridge Analytica, a data-analysis firm that worked for the Trump campaign, while it investigates whether the company held onto improperly obtained user data after telling Facebook it had deleted the information.

The social network said in a blog post that the firm violated its policies by receiving user data from a Facebook app created by a University of Cambridge professor.

But while Cambridge Analytica certified in 2015 said that it had destroyed the wayward data, Facebook said, the social network received reports “several days ago” that not all the data was deleted.

Cambridge Analytica claims to build psychological profiles based on personal details from millions of Americans that can categorize individual voters.

The company has surfaced on several occasions in probes of 2016 Russian election interference.

 

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