Australian regulator finds 311,074 Facebook users exposed via 53 quiz installs
This digest was compiled by AI from multiple sources — links to the originals are below.
Australia's privacy regulator found that 311,074 Facebook users had their data exposed through the thisisyourdigitallife personality quiz, despite only 53 Australians installing the app. The exposure came via friendships with roughly 300,000 global installers, whose friend lists were harvested under Facebook's then-current platform rules. The finding is part of a seven-year legal process that concluded with an enforceable undertaking against Meta.
Key Facts
- 311,074 Australians were exposed through friendships with installers of the thisisyourdigitallife quiz, while only 53 Australians installed the app themselves.
- The app, built by Cambridge University psychologist Aleksandr Kogan in 2013, reached up to 87 million Facebook accounts worldwide.
- Facebook's chief technology officer Mike Schroepfer confirmed the 87 million figure in an April 2018 post announcing platform restrictions.
- The Australian regulator's enforceable undertaking with Meta states the 53-to-311,074 ratio explicitly.
- The data collection relied on Facebook's developer platform rules that allowed apps to access friends' data without their consent.
The Quiz and Its Reach
Aleksandr Kogan, a psychologist at Cambridge University, built the thisisyourdigitallife app in 2013 through his company Global Science Research. Around 300,000 people worldwide installed the app, answering questions for academic research and a small payment. Facebook's developer platform at the time allowed installed apps to request data about the installer's friends, including names, birthdays, locations, and page likes. Chief technology officer Mike Schroepfer later put the total number of affected accounts at up to 87 million in an April 2018 post. The Australian regulator's enforceable undertaking with Meta states that 53 Australian users installed the app, while 311,074 Australians were directly linked as Facebook friends to an installer.
Consent and Data Collection
Privacy rules typically require a two-party agreement, but Kogan's app treated one person's consent as permission to collect data about hundreds of others. None of the 311,074 Australians downloaded the app or approved the data collection themselves, and Facebook's rules did not require either. The harvested data included birthdays, suburbs, and page likes, which at scale can support inferences about temperament and politics. Predicting traits from likes alone, without users answering questions, was the commercial purpose behind paying people to take the quiz.
Legal Aftermath
Consequences arrived slowly over seven years of court proceedings, mostly in the form of financial penalties. The Australian regulator's enforceable undertaking with Meta formalized the findings on the 53 installers and 311,074 exposed users. Fifty-three people cannot meaningfully speak for a population the size of Newcastle, the regulator noted.
1 source
Australian regulator finds 311,074 Facebook users exposed via 53 quiz installs
