Twitter denies report of selling users’ data to CA researcher

According to the report, Twitter sold public data access “for one day” in 2015 to Aleksandr Kogan, then a psychology researcher with University of Cambridge, and his company Global Science Research (GSR). “GSR paid for one day of access in 2015, Twitter said, and scooped up a ‘random sample’ of public tweets covering a period between December 2014 and April 2015. Twitter added that it ‘did not find any access’ to private information,” the report noted. 

In a statement, Twitter said that based on the recent reports, they conducted their own internal review and did not find any access to private data about people who use Twitter.  “Unlike many other services, Twitter is public by its nature. People come to Twitter to speak publicly, and public Tweets are viewable and searchable by anyone,” a Twitter spokesperson said. 

“In 2015, GSR did have onetime API access to a random sample of public Tweets from a five-month period from December 2014 to April 2015,” he added. 

The API access was for one day to pull a random sample from five months of “public” Tweets. According to sources, this is an important distinction from the way CA used other platforms like Facebook to improperly share users’ data, including that of its CEO Mark Zuckerberg. 

According to The Sunday Telegraph report, Kogan said the Twitter data had only been used to create “brand reports” and “survey extender tools” and that he had not violated Twitter’s policies. However, “the most immediate concern is that GSR could theoretically have correlated Facebook and Twitter data. Still, this shows just how comprehensive the data collection was,” technology portal Engadget reported. 

The quiz app “thisisyourdigitallife” developed by Kogan and his firm GSR, collected data from millions of Facebook users without their consent in 2014-2015 which was later shared with the British political consultancy firm Cambridge Analytica. The leaked data was said to be inappropriately used by Cambridge Analytica in activities connected with US President Donald Trump’s election campaign in 2016.