The Central Bureau of Investigation has filed an FIR against Cambridge Analytica Limited and Global Science Private Limited in association with data fraud of 5.62 lakh Facebook users in India. An initial inquiry was launched by CBI in 2018 and after discovering the charges true, the federal investigation agency has filed a case against these UK based companies.
According to the investigation agency, to determine the charges of data-stealing, details were asked from Facebook and Cambridge Analytica for asserted violations, misuse of data, the extent of data leakage of Indian users, probable misuse of the data by Cambridge Analytica for profiling, and hold elections in India. Facebook in response had replied, “Data of 5.62 lakh Indians users might have been illegally collected.” Cambridge Analytica on the other hand replied that ”they only received data of UK users from the Global Science Private Limited.”
“Enquiry has revealed that Aleksandr Kogan, Founder-Director of Global Science Private Limited had produced an application “thisisyourdigitallife”. As per the platform policy of Facebook, this application was commissioned to handle some particular data of users for academic and research objectives. The APP illegally gathered data of users and their friend’s network on Facebook,” explains the CBI.Facebook in reply, told CBI that this application was practiced by 335 users in India. However, through this application, Facebook friends of these users were also targeted and data of 5.62 lakh was illegally stolen without the knowledge of users. CBI also received information from 6 users of these applications who told CBI that they doubt that their data including their friends’ data were seized.
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“Global Science Research Limited, UK, entered into a criminal conspiracy with Cambridge Analytica, the UK in 2014, and the right to use illegally harvested data was given to Cambridge Analytica for commercial purposes,” added the CBI FIR. Both the UK based firms have been booked by CBI for criminal conspiracy and violating IT Acts.
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