Ted Cruz's headquarters collected psychological data from voters on Facebook

The headquarters of the US presidential candidate from the Republican Party of Texas Senator Ted Cruz uses the psychological data of potential voters, obtained by researching the personal information of millions of Facebook users, collected mostly without their permission, reports The Guardian.

The candidate resorted to such methods in order to increase his advantage over Donald Trump.

The collection and analysis of personal data is carried out by the University of Cambridge in the UK and funded by the main sponsor of Cruise. The purpose of the study is to compile detailed psychological profiles of the US electorate on a database collected by conducting a series of psychological surveys of unsuspecting Facebook users.

The documents at the disposal of The Guardian indicate that Cruise’s headquarters paid Cambridge analysts at least 750 thousand dollars in 2015 a year. The British company over the past two years also received about 2,5 million dollars from traditional sponsors of the Conservative Party.

Representatives of the analytical center at the University of Cambridge refused to comment on the data obtained by The Guardian.

But Facebook said that they “thoroughly investigate the situation” with Cruise’s election campaign.

“Misleading people or misusing information are direct violations of our policies, and we will take strong action against companies that do this, including requiring that companies misusing information from Facebook be banned and all data collected with violations, destroyed,” the social network office said.

Representatives of the election headquarters of Cruise said that analysts at Cambridge University help them with online tracking and messages, according to them, the company organizes people search for them on the Internet.

As wrote “Forum”, November 10 regular debates of the Republican Party took place.