Twitter Data Also Sold to Cambridge Analytica Researcher

Reports say that Twitter Inc. had also sold its users’ data to Aleksandr Kogan, a researcher in Cambridge Analytica.

Beginning in 2014, Kogan created the “thisisyourdigitallife” personality quiz on Facebook. All personal data of the users who took the quiz and their friends have been leaked and collected without their consent. More than 87 million users of the giant social media platform had been affected; this data breach is infamously known as the “Cambridge Analytica scandal”.

According to Twitter, Kogan established “Global Science Research”, his own commercial enterprise. The firm paid for one day in 2015 and twitter granted access to its large-scale public data.

Furthermore, the social media giant showed up a “random sample” of public tweets covering a period between December 2014 to April 2015. Twitter added that it “did not find any access to private information,” the report noted.

Twitter already conducted an internal investigation and confirmed that the Cambridge Analytica did not get any access to users’ private data. The company has banned and removed Cambridge Analytica and other affiliated entities from buying data and running adverts.

"Twitter has also made the policy decision to off-board advertising from all accounts owned and operated by Cambridge Analytica. This decision is based on our determination that Cambridge Analytica operates using a business model that inherently conflicts with acceptable Twitter Ads business practices," a Twitter spokesperson reported.

Meanwhile, Kogan reportedly said that the Twitter data had only been used to create “brand reports” and “survey extender tools”. He added that his company did not violate any of the Twitter’s policies.

“The most immediate concern is that GSR could theoretically have correlated Facebook and Twitter data. Still, this shows just how comprehensive the data collection was,” another report said.

Not a Breach

Twitter’s public data sold to Global Science Research is technically not a breach. Both parties confirmed that there are no private data had been sold. According to experts, Kogan could have used the Twitter data to correlate it with the Facebook data at his disposal.

The company sells its data to organizations which often use them to analyze events, sentiments, or customer service. It uses application programming interfaces (APIs) or other software that requests and delivers information.

In addition, enterprise users are given the broadest data. This includes the users’ last 30 days of tweets and access to tweets from as far back as 2006. To have the access, customers must state how they plan to use the data and who the end users are. 

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