New Mexico trial begins over Cambridge Analytica data misuse by Facebook
New Mexico is pursuing a trial against Meta/Facebook over the Cambridge Analytica data breach that occurred before and during the 2016 U.S. election, alleging the company failed to protect approximately 87 million user profiles whose data was harvested through a personality quiz and sold to the political consulting firm. The state claims the data was used to target Democratic voters with messaging intended to suppress turnout, and seeks maximum civil penalties and an injunction against future data breaches.
What happened
A personality quiz on Facebook harvested data from approximately 87 million user profiles and sold it to Cambridge Analytica, a political consulting firm.
Cambridge Analytica used the Facebook data to generate targeted political advertisements during the 2016 U.S. presidential election, including messaging targeting Democratic voters in specific geographic areas with messaging such as "Hillary's got it, you don't need to vote," allegedly intended to reduce voter turnout.
Facebook flagged over 2,000 apps internally but did not alert users or force apps to delete the harvested data.
Reported impact
Approximately 350,000 New Mexicans were exposed to the data breach.
The targeted advertising campaign used Facebook profile data to attempt to influence voting behavior during the 2016 presidential election.
Index analysis
New Mexico argues that Facebook failed to alert or protect users from the personality quiz application that harvested their data and failed to implement adequate safeguards to prevent third-party data harvesting.
Governance controls
Facebook's attorney stated the company conducted independent investigations following the breach, banned suspicious apps, and referred suspicious developers to regulators.
Facebook's attorney argued the company has implemented improved safeguards since the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
Classification
Sources and evidence
This record was researched and written by the Index, based on the following original reporting.