Twitter also sold data to researchers in Cambridge Analytica scandal

Twitter sold data to the Cambridge University researcher who harvested millions of Facebook users' private information without their consent. The social media site confirmed this week it sold public data to Dr Aleksandr Kogan, who created tools that allowed the political consultancy firm Cambridge Analytica to psychologically profile and target voters using Facebook user data. Dr Kogan's firm GSR gathered a'random sample' of public tweets after it paid for one day of access in 2015, Twitter said - years before the recent scandal emerged. The academic insisted he had not violated Twitter's policies and the information had only been used to build'brand reports' and'survey extender tools'. However, concerns remain that GSR could theoretically have correlated Facebook and Twitter data to build up more complete digital profiles of users.