Cambridge Analytica, which is now defunct, was hired by Ted Cruz and Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaigns and accessed the personal data of up to 87 million people through an app called “thisisyourdigitallife.” This data was then used to target individuals with personalized messages. The scandal was exposed by The New York Times and The Guardian in 2018 thanks to whistleblower Christopher Wylie. In 2019, Facebook agreed to pay a $5 billion fine as a result of a Federal Trade Commission investigation and $100 million to settle US Securities and Exchange Commission claims. It also paid £500,000 (about $644,000) in fines to the UK, a small amount compared to what it would have had to pay if the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) had been in place at the time of the scandal.
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