Facebook Won't Financially Compensate For Cambridge Analytica Case

Facebook said Thursday it will not compensate users in the scandal over the misuse of their personal data by political consultancy Cambridge Analytica. The company made the statement in a list of written replies to questions by European Union lawmakers. The answers were promised after testimony earlier this week by CEO Mark Zuckerberg in Brussels had left EU lawmakers frustrated about a lack of responses. Cambridge Analytica used the data of millions of Facebook users to target ads during political campaigns, including allegedly the U.S. presidential vote.

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EU lawmakers said that would make Facebook liable for compensation toward EU users. Facebook said the misuse of data was a “breach of trust,” but noted that no bank account or credit card details had been shared. And it said there was no evidence EU user data had been involved. Facebook has said previously that it first learned of the breach of privacy more than two years ago, but hadn’t mentioned it publicly until when the scandal broke out in March.

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The data was originally pulled together by an app, called “This Is Your Digital Life,” created by researcher Aleksandr Kogan. He paid about 270,000 people to take part in it. Cambridge Analytica later obtained information from the app for as many as 87 million Facebook users, as the app also vacuumed up data on people’s friends — including those who never downloaded the app or gave explicit consent. It is unclear how many of the users were in Europe. Facebook said Thursday that it is conducting a “forensic audit of Cambridge Analytica.”

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