US senator worries that Mail.ru might be the next ‘Cambridge Analytica scandal’

Until 2015, several applications developed for Facebook by third-party companies had access to personal information shared by users and their friends. The apps could see names, genders, birth dates, places of birth, photos, and “liked” posts and pages. One of the businesses that collaborated with Facebook like this was the Russian company Mail.ru [part of the LSE-listed Internet giant Mail.Ru Group].

In May 2015, Facebook prohibited third-party applications from collecting information about users’ friends, but 61 companies — including Mail.ru — enjoyed continued access to this data for a limited time. After the US Senate launched an investigation on how Cambridge Analytica acquired and used personal data about millions of Facebook users, Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, told CNN that Mail.ru “potentially had hundreds of apps integrated with Facebook, collecting user data.”

Arguing that Mail.ru’s “executives boast close ties to Vladimir Putin,” Senator Warner says U.S. officials “need to determine what user information was shared with Mail.ru and what may have been done with the captured data.”