The academic at the centre of Facebook’s data breach claims he has been unfairly scapegoated by the social network and Cambridge Analytica, the firm that acquired the information.
Aleksandr Kogan, a Moldovan-born researcher from Cambridge University, admits harvesting the personal details of 30 million Facebook users via a personality app he developed.
He then passed the data to Cambridge Analytica who assured him this was legal, he said.
Cambridge Analytica whistleblower Christopher Wylie told the Observer that the data Kogan obtained was used to influence the outcome of the US presidential election, a charge the firm denies.
Kogan told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Wednesday that he was being unjustly blamed for the scandal.
He said: “My view is that I’m being basically used as a scapegoat by both Facebook and Cambridge Analytica. Honestly we thought we were acting perfectly appropriately. We thought we were doing something that was really normal.”
Last week Facebook announced it was suspending Cambridge Analytica and Kogan from the platform, pending further investigation over misuse of data. Facebook insists Kogan violated its platform policy by transferring data his app collected to Cambridge Analytica. It also said he had specifically assured Facebook that the data would never be used for commercial purposes.
Kogan said the scandal raised questions about the business model of social networking companies. Kogan said: “The project that Cambridge Analytica has allegedly done, which is use people’s Facebook data for micro-targeting, is the primary use case for most data on these platforms. Facebook and Twitter and other platforms make their money through advertising and so there’s an agreement between the user of ‘hey, you will get this amazing product that costs billions of dollars to run and in return we can sell you to advertisers for micro-targeting’.”
Kogan also disputed Cambridge Analytica’s claim that he had approached them with the idea.
He said: “That is a fabrication. They approached me; in terms of the usage of Facebook data they wrote the terms of service for the app. They provided the legal advice that this was all appropriate. So I’m definitely surprised by their comments and I don’t think they are accurate.”
He pointed out that it paid up to $800,000 to recruit about 200,000 people to use it. He said: “I have never profited from this in anyway personally. This money was paid mostly … for the participants – each person was paid $3 to $4 (£2.10 to £2.80), so that’s where really the money went.”
Kogan said he was told that the scheme was legal but accepts he should have questioned the ethics of the exercise.
He said: “They [Cambridge Analytica] communicated that this would be a fully commercial project and that terms of service would be ones that allowed a broad licence for usage. What was communicated to me strongly is that thousands and maybe tens of thousands of apps were doing the exact same thing. And this was a pretty normal use case of Facebook data.”
Cambridge Analytica denies using the Facebook data during the Trump campaign.
Kogan said: “We were assured by Cambridge Analytica that everything was perfectly legal and within the limits of the terms of service. One of the great mistakes I did here was that I just didn’t ask enough questions.
While at Cambridge Kogan accepted a position at St Petersburg State University, and also took Russian government grants for research.
Kogan laughed off suspicions that he is linked to the Kremlin. He said: “This one is pretty funny … anyone who knows me knows I’m a very happy-go-lucky goofy guy, the last one to have any real links to espionage.”
Wylie claims most of the personal information harvested by Kogan’s app had been taken without authorisation. He said Cambridge Analytica used it to build a powerful software program to predict and influence choices at the ballot box.
Kogan said he had no knowledge of how the information was subsequently used. He said he would feel “horrible” if the data had helped influence the election. “Mr Trump is not somebody whose values align well with mine,” he said.
He also doubts it could have been useful. Kogan, who works at Cambridge University’s psychology department, said: “The accuracy of this data has been extremely exaggerated. In practice my best guess is that we were six times more likely to get everything wrong about a person as we were to get everything right about a person. I personally don’t think micro-targeting is an effective way to use such data sets.
“It could have only hurt the campaign. What Cambridge Analytica has tried to sell is magic. And it made claims that this is incredibly accurate and it tells you everything there is to tell about you, but the reality is that it’s not that. If you really work through the statistics … those claims quickly fall apart.”
Cambridge Analytica’s chief executive, Alexander Nix, who was suspended on Tuesday, told MPs in February that his company did not use Facebook data in its work.
In a statement published on Saturday, the company denied any wrongdoing and said it did not harvest Facebook data, and none was used in the 2016 presidential election. It said it fully complied with Facebook’s terms of service and it had deleted all the data it received from Kogan’s company.