Facebook on Friday has announced that it is going to suspend the Canadian Data Firm linked to Cambridge Analytica named AgregateIQ who have the same parent company SCL.
“In light of recent reports that AggregateIQ may be affiliated with SCL and may, as a result, have improperly received FB user data, we have added them to the list of entities we have suspended from our platform while we investigate,” Facebook said in a statement obtained by CNN.
There are speculations AggregateIQ worked for campaigns trying to convince British People to Vote for England leaving the European Union. AggregateIQ released a statement
“AggregateIQ has never been and is not a part of Cambridge Analytica or SCL. AggregateIQ has never entered into a contract with Cambridge Analytica,” it said.
The company has also denied of being involved in an illegal spying activity by saying
AggregateIQ has never managed, nor did we ever have access to, any Facebook data or database allegedly obtained improperly by Cambridge Analytica.”
While Cambridge Analytica said that it has outsourced the software development process to AggregateIQ in 2014. Facebook has suspended Cambridge Analytica for using the private data of 50 Million users without permission. Facebook said that the numbers of affected users have gone up to 87 Million users. Cambridge Analytica has disputed the numbers and also said that this data was not shared with AggregateIQ.
Facebook has said that this data was initially collected by the professor for academic purposes and was later transferred to third parties, including the Cambridge Analytica in violation of Facebook’s Data policies but Cambridge Analytica said:
“Cambridge Analytica licensed data for no more than 30 million people from GSR, as is clearly stated in our contract with the research company,” the company said in a statement. “We did not receive more data than this.”
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