An academic ethical review could have prevented the Cambridge Analytica breach

When the Facebook data of 50m users was collected by Cambridge academic Aleksandr Kogan, his actions reportedly came to the attention of colleagues who regarded his subsequent use of the data as unethical. The university revealed that Kogan had unsuccessfully applied for ethics approval in 2015 to use data collected on behalf of GSR, a commercial enterprise he set up, for use in his academic research. He was reapplying for approval when Facebook requested that the data he had gathered be delete