Self-described whistleblower suspended by Facebook after Cambridge Analytica reports

Christopher Wylie, a former employee of Cambridge Analytica, claims Facebook suspended him for whistleblowing.

Wylie’s claim comes after Cambridge Analytica, the data firm used by the Trump campaign during the 2016 election, was exposed for having illegally harvested the Facebook data of millions of people.

On Sunday, Wylie shared a screenshot of an “account disabled” message that he said came from Facebook. He said the company suspended him for revealing something that they had already known for two years.

Suspended by @facebook. For blowing the whistle. On something they have known privately for 2 years. pic.twitter.com/iSu6VwqUdG

— Christopher Wylie (@chrisinsilico) March 18, 2018

Cambridge Analytica was suspended by Facebook on Friday for not fully deleting data it obtained from Aleksandr Kogan, a University of Cambridge professor. Kogan had gathered the data via an app he had created, which used a Facebook login.

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The firm obtained the private information of more than 50 million people from Kogan, The New York Times reported.

Roughly 30 million of the profiles Kogan gave the firm had enough information to create psychographic profiles but only 270,000 people had given permission for their data to be collected.

Facebook said it discovered the violation in 2015 and instructed the firm to provide certification that it had deleted the data. Facebook says the firm provided the certification, but in recent days it received reports that the firm had not deleted all of its data.

The firm was largely owned by the Mercer family, who backed Trump during the 2016 election. Former White House strategist and chief campaign executive Stephen Bannon has served as vice president of the firm.

Special counsel Robert Mueller reportedly requested all the emails between the firm and the Trump campaign as part of his investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election.