Man behind Cambridge Analytica’s Facebook data mining says he’s sorry

Enlarge (credit: Anthony Quintano / Flickr)

In advance of his upcoming testimony before the UK Parliament, Aleksandr Kogan wants the public to know two things: he's sorry, and he's not a Russian agent. (Kogan, who was born in Moldova, moved to Moscow as a child before eventually emigrating to the United States, where he became a citizen.)

Kogan, who authored the initial Facebook app created at the behest of Cambridge Analytica, has now come forward. He recently granted interviews to The New York Times, BuzzFeed News, and CBS' 60 Minutes. (Kogan did not respond to Ars' request for comment.)

It was Kogan's 2014 app, "This is Your Digital Life," which invited users to log in with their Facebook credentials and answer a slew of survey questions in exchange for $4. Those respondents also allowed Kogan and his team access to their friends' public profile data. In the end, this system captured data on 87 million Facebook users. This data trove ultimately wound up in the hands of Donald Trump's presidential campaign when it hired the London-based firm.

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