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Bloomberg
The UK’s privacy watchdog searched the London offices of Cambridge Analytica in the wake of allegations that information on millions of Facebook Inc.’s users was scooped up without their consent, widening a probe that cut the internet giant’s share price by more than 10 percent this week.
The Information Commissioner’s Office said the search that began on March 23 and ended about 3 am on Saturday, and in a tweet said it’s “assessing evidence before deciding
next steps.†The watchdog is leading the probe with the backing of the European Union’s remaining 27 regulators, who vowed to collaborate to get to the bottom of the “very serious allegation with far-reaching consequences.†“This is just one part of a larger investigation into the use of personal data for political purposes,†the office said in a statement after a judge granted the request for a warrant.
Facebook has also come under pressure since the revelations that vast swathes of data was held by Cambridge Analytica after it was obtained from a researcher who shared the data without the social network’s permission. According to news reports,
Cambridge University researcher Aleksandr Kogan created a personality-analysis app that was used by 270,000 Facebook users, who in turn gave the app permission to access data on themselves and their friends, ultimately exposing a network of 50 million people.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg apologised and promised to investigate whether Cambridge Analytica still holds the information it obtained from a third-party app creator and to broaden the probe to other developers who harvest data. Lawmakers in the US have also called on Zuckerberg to testify about how Facebook safeguards user data.
A movement called #DeleteFacebook is gathering momentum after Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, joined those who want to get rid of their Facebook accounts. Musk tweeted that Tesla’s official Facebook page should “definitely’ be deleted, and it promptly was, along with the page of his rocket company, Space Exploration Technologies Corp.