Facebook Files Unruffled by Quiz App Integrated Private Messages

SAN FRANCISCO — Facebook has said that political recordsdata firm Cambridge Analytica improperly harvested the public profile recordsdata of as much as 87 million of its customers, together with their political opinions, interests and mates’ recordsdata.

Now the social community has revealed that the extent of the harvesting went even extra — it integrated of us’s deepest messages, too.

On Monday, Facebook began informing of us whose recordsdata could presumably also just accumulate been compromised by Cambridge Analytica via an app developed by the researcher Aleksandr Kogan. In its notifications, Facebook said that while the recommendations harvested turn out to be largely dinky to what turn out to be on of us’s public profiles, “a tiny series of of us” also shared recordsdata from their Facebook timeline, posts and messages.

Facebook didn’t specify how many folks’s messages accumulate been gathered and said it turn out to be taking as astronomical a ogle as doubtless when notifying those who their recordsdata could presumably also just accumulate been taken.

The revelation widens the scope of recordsdata that turn out to be harvested from of us on Facebook and how it went previous what turn out to be publicly available. The model could presumably also just provide grist to lawmakers on a day when Imprint Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief government, is made up our minds to be grilled on Capitol Hill over recordsdata privacy and moderately just a few issues, similar to Russian misuse of the social community to steer the 2016 election.

How Mr. Zuckerberg publicly addresses these concerns in congressional hearings on Tuesday and Wednesday might be closely scrutinized. Facebook faces doubtless law and moderately just a few adjustments amid a backlash over the dearth of recordsdata privacy.

The Cambridge Analytica outcry turn out to be led to after The New York Times and others reported final month that a quiz app made by Mr. Kogan had quiet recordsdata on Facebook customers. That recordsdata turn out to be then frail by Cambridge Analytica to save psychological profiles of voters in the United States and others.

It is not sure whether or not the bid messages accumulate been among the many recordsdata finally offered to Cambridge Analytica. In an interview on Tuesday, Mr. Kogan told The Times that the deepest messages accumulate been harvested from a dinky series of of us, doubtless “a couple thousand,” as fragment of a separate educational research project and by no methodology offered to Cambridge Analytica.

He said the messages accumulate been quiet as fragment of research that he conducted at Cambridge University in 2013 and the most necessary half of of 2014, sooner than he began working with Cambridge Analytica. The messages accumulate been quiet for research into how of us use emojis to bring emotions.

Mr. Kogan said the messages accumulate been saved securely in his college lab, frequently called the Cambridge Prosociality and Successfully-Being Lab, and earn entry to turn out to be restricted to a tiny neighborhood of of us.

The message recordsdata “turn out to be clearly gentle so we tried to video display out about who could presumably earn entry to it,” Mr. Kogan said. He wired that his Facebook app quiet messages most efficient from a “couple thousand” of us that carried out his questionnaire, not from their mates.

At some level of Mr. Kogan’s later work for Cambridge Analytica, his Facebook app took recordsdata from of us that took his questionnaire and from all their mates. However the recommendations didn’t consist of deepest messages — it integrated most efficient names, delivery dates, locations and pages the customers had loved, he said.