Facebook is suspending a data analysis company that rose to prominence for its work on Donald Trump's presidential campaign, and which has been accused of having a shadowy influence on British voters.



The social network announced the suspension of Cambridge Analytica on Friday, saying it received reports that the company had not deleted data it received from an app developer, despite saying it had done so.

On Saturday, the New York Times and the Guardian published joint reports alleging Facebook's statement only came after reporters with the newspapers inquired about Cambridge Analytica possessing — and still possessing — data from as many as 50 million users.

"During a week of inquiries from The Times, Facebook downplayed the scope of the leak and questioned whether any of the data still remained out of its control," the New York Times report read. "But on Friday, the company posted a statement expressing alarm and promising to take action."

The data was given to Cambridge Analytica by Aleksandr Kogan, a professor at Cambridge University, who legitimately gained access to Facebook users' personal data, but then broke the rules by passing it along to a third party.

At the time in 2015, Facebook said it removed Kogan's app and demanded certifications from him and all parties he had given data to that the information had been destroyed. Cambridge Analytica and Kogan, as well as a third vendor, Christopher Wylie of Eunoia Technologies, all certified that they had destroyed the data, Facebook said.

The suspension Friday was put in place to investigate the claims to the contrary, Facebook said.



"We are moving aggressively to determine the accuracy of these claims," Facebook's vice president and deputy general counsel, Paul Grewal, said in a statement. "If true, this is another unacceptable violation of trust and the commitments they made."

An account apparently belonging to Wylie, who was extensively quoted in the reports, later announced on Twitter that he too had been suspended from Facebook.