UPDATED 23:38 EDT / APRIL 17 2018

APPS

New Cambridge Analytica revelations: ICO plans and more data harvesting quizzes

The research company behind Facebook Inc.’s massive data harvesting scandal, Cambridge Analytica, was trying to create its own cryptocurrency and raise money through an initial coin offering.

Reuters reported that the firm was trying to raise as much as $30 million. The plan was to develop a platform for users to use blockchain to store and possibly make money from their own personal data. The development started midway through 2017 and came to halt when the company became embroiled in the scandal.

“Prior to the Facebook controversy, we were developing a suite of technologies to help individuals reclaim their personal data from corporate entities and to have full transparency and control over how their personal data are used,” a Cambridge Analytica spokesman told Reuters.

Perhaps a bigger revelation came from former Cambridge Analytica executive Brittany Kaiser, who told a U.K. parliamentary committee on Monday that there was a suite of quizzes designed to collect information on users, rather than the one quiz we know about.

That quiz was Cambridge researcher Aleksandr Kogan’s “This Is Your Digital Life” app, but Kaiser told the committee that there was a wide range of similar surveys that the firm used, “designed specifically to harvest data from individuals using Facebook as the tool.”

“I do not know the specifics of these surveys or how the data was acquired or processed,” she said in her statement. “But I believe it is almost certain that the number of Facebook users whose data was compromised through routes similar to that used by Kogan is much greater than 87 million.”

She talked about two such quizzes, a “music version” and the “sex compass,” both designed to harvest Facebook users’ data. What this means, she said, is that “it can be inferred or implied that there were many additional individuals as opposed to just the ones through Aleksandr Kogan’s test who may have been compromised.”

During Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg’s grilling in front of Congress last week, one of the things he most often repeated was that there will be a full investigation into all apps on the platform and how they collect data. If it’s found that users have been compromised, Zuckerberg said, the app will be banned and anyone affected will be informed.

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