Whistleblower's story explains why Facebook booted Cambridge Analytica

Now we know why Facebook gave Cambridge Analytica the boot on Friday. What's less clear is why it took so long.

The social media company was aware as far back as late 2015 that, starting in early 2014, the Trump-linked U.K data firm had secretly harvested profile data belonging to 50 million users, according to a follow-up report from The Observer. The paper calls it Facebook's biggest data breach to date.

The details come from a whistleblower, Christopher Wylie, who said he worked with Aleksandr Kogan, a student at Cambridge University, to obtain the data. Kogan created an app called "thisisyourdigitallife" that paid users to take a personality test. Participants had to sign in through their Facebook login and agree to let their data be used for academic purposes. Read more...