Twitter sold data to the Cambridge University academic who harvested millions of Facebook users’ information without their knowledge, the Sunday Telegraph can reveal.

Aleksandr Kogan, who created tools for Cambridge Analytica that allowed the political consultancy to psychologically profile and target voters, bought the data from the microblogging website in 2015, before the recent scandal came to light.

Facebook CTO this week appeared in front of British MPs to explain the role it played in 87million people's user data being harvested, many of which without their knowing credit: AFP

Dr Kogan, meanwhile, insisted the data had only been used to create “brand reports” and “survey extender tools” and that he had not violated Twitter’s policies. While most tweets are public, Twitter charges companies and organisations to collect them en masse. Large datasets are particularly useful for gleaning public opinion or receptiveness to certain topics and ideas, although Twitter bans companies from using the data to derive sensitive political information or matching it with personal information obtained elsewhere.

In 2017 data sales made up $333m (£242m) of Twitter’s revenue, some 13pc of its total sales.

A Twitter spokesman confirmed the ban and said: “Twitter has also made the policy decision to off-board advertising from all accounts owned and operated by Cambridge Analytica. This decision is based on our determination that Cambridge Analytica operates using a business model that inherently conflicts with acceptable Twitter Ads business practices.

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“Cambridge Analytica may remain an organic user on our platform, in accordance with the Twitter Rules.”

The company said it does not allow “inferring or deriving sensitive information like race or political affiliation, or attempts to match a user’s Twitter information with other personal identifiers” and that it had staff in place to police this “rigorously”.

A Cambridge Analytica spokesman said the company used Twitter for political advertising but insisted that it had never “undertaken a project with GSR focusing on Twitter data and Cambridge Analytica has never received Twitter data from GSR.

It added that “Cambridge Analytica is a data-driven marketing agency and does not ‘manipulate political views’.”

Dr Kogan told the Digital, Culture, Media & Sport committee last week that his company GSR was created in 2014 purely to create datasets for SCL. b