Tillis may have benefited from Facebook data breach

http://www.wral.com/tillis-may-have-benefited-from-facebook-data-breach/17427902/

By Laura Leslie, WRAL Capitol Bureau chief

RALEIGH, N.C. — The data firm accused of stealing the private information of more than 50 million Facebook users may have used that information to help U.S. Sen. Thom Tillis win his seat in 2014.

North Carolina voters were among the first in the U.S. to be targeted by Cambridge Analytica, which boasted that its cache of "psychographic data" could be used to build personality profiles of voters and target political ads at them to influence their behavior.

Much of that data appears to have come from Facebook profiles.

One of the founders of Cambridge Analytica said the firm bought Facebook data, starting in 2014, from a Russia-linked researcher who claimed he was gathering it for academic study. It was gathered using a Facebook personality quiz that also took personal data from a user's friends without their knowledge.

Roughly 270,000 people downloaded and shared personal details with the app.

Facebook reportedly learned of the data breach more than two years ago but did not tell users. Instead, the social media giant told Cambridge Analytica to delete the unauthorized data. The firm claimed it did, but copies of the database still exist.

In 2014, Tillis' campaign paid Cambridge Analytica $30,000, and the North Carolina Republican Party paid $150,000, making the GOP the company's fourth-largest client that year. The party also paid the firm $65,000 in 2015.

Cambridge Analytica now features Tillis' successful campaign to unseat Democratic U.S. Sen. Kay Hagan as a case study on its website.


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