Cambridge Analytica Data on Thousands of Facebook Users Still Circulating

Personal data from several thousand U.S.-based Facebook users harvested by Cambridge Analytica are still circulating, despite assurances that they have been deleted, Channel 4 reported Wednesday. The cache of campaign data stemming from a Cambridge Analytica source “details 136,000 individuals in the US state of Colorado, along with each person’s personality and psychological profile,” according to the report. The data dates from 2014, and was reportedly used in targeting campaigns in Cambridge Analytica’s election work for Republicans and incoming Trump national-security adviser John Bolton’s Super PAC. Channel 4 also claims that a similar cache of data exists for the state of Oregon. This directly contracts a recent statement from the data-analysis firm, which claimed that “all the data, all derivatives and backups” were deleted upon request from Facebook. The data has reportedly been passed around “using generic, non-corporate email systems, outside of the servers of Cambridge Analytica, and linked company SCL.”