The social networking giant banned the practice of acquiring users’ friends lists in 2014 after former President Barack Obama’s campaign weaponized the method and got access to the data of millions of potential voters.
But Clinton’s application took advantage of special iPhone and Facebook integration, asking every user to pair their friends list on Facebook with their phone contacts – and give the campaign permission to access that info.
People who didn’t download the application weren’t able to stop friends from pairing their phone numbers with Facebook accounts if their friends decided to do so.
Once the friends list was paired with the app, people had to swipe through their Facebook friends and dismiss those who, in their view, would never vote for Clinton. Once that was done, the remaining friends were sorted by location and the users could send a pre-written text message to convince them to back Clinton in numerous ways.
Clinton campaign app may have harvested Facebook data of millions
But Clinton’s application took advantage of special iPhone and Facebook integration, asking every user to pair their friends list on Facebook with their phone contacts – and give the campaign permission to access that info.
People who didn’t download the application weren’t able to stop friends from pairing their phone numbers with Facebook accounts if their friends decided to do so.
Once the friends list was paired with the app, people had to swipe through their Facebook friends and dismiss those who, in their view, would never vote for Clinton. Once that was done, the remaining friends were sorted by location and the users could send a pre-written text message to convince them to back Clinton in numerous ways.
Clinton campaign app may have harvested Facebook data of millions