Cambridge Analytica raises business after scandal with Facebook data. The founder of SCL Group, the parent company of Cambridge Analytica, confirmed this to The Wall Street Journal. This company, formerly known as Strategic Communication Laboratories, also closes its doors according to the newspaper.
The company has decided because it has lost customers with Facebook data since the scandal. The company also has to deal with accumulating legal costs.
In a statement, Cambridge Analytica says that both the Cambridge Analytica company and SCL Elections are filing for bankruptcy. Both companies fall under SCL Group, But parent company was missing in the declaration.
“In recent months, Cambridge Analytica has been the subject of several unfounded accusations,” the company writes.
“In spite of our attempts to rectify this, the company has been targeted for actions that are not legal but widely accepted as a normal method for both political and commercial online advertising.”
Cambridge Analytica worked for the Trump campaign during the American presidential elections in 2016. The company also has links with a data company that is involved in the Leave camp of the Brexit referendum.
Damian Collins, the chairman of the British parliamentary committee that researches data abuse, says on Twitter that Cambridge Analytica and SCL Group are not allowed to destroy their archives by setting up the companies. “The research into their work is of vital importance,” he writes.
Facebook scandal
Cambridge Analytica is the pivot in the privacy scandal surrounding Facebook. The company unintentionally owned the data of millions of Facebook users.
The data were collected using an app called ‘thisisyourdigitallife’, developed by researcher Aleksandr Kogan. The app not only received data from users,
but also from their friends. Facebook offered this opportunity to app developers as standard, until the company definitively ended the function in 2015.
Cambridge Analytica says it has not received more than 30 million Facebook profiles. The company also denies usage of data for the Trump campaign. Researcher Kogan said last month before the British parliament that the data are worthless for this purpose.
Alexander Nix, the suspended CEO of Cambridge Analytica, was one of the directors of this company. Appointed as a member of the Board of Management in January 2018. At the end of March, Nix was relieved from that position for unknown reasons.