President Barack Obama's 2012 re-election campaign mined supporters' personal data from Facebook to benefit its voter turnout program. An estimated 1 million Obama supporters gave the campaign access to their Facebook data. The Obama data was used in voter turnout efforts, with a focus on young voters in key battleground states, and former campaign officials said the data was kept secure and not sold to or acquired from third parties. Carol Davidsen, who served as the Obama campaign's director of data integration and media analytics, tweeted Sunday that Facebook allowed the campaign to access the data "because they were on our side." The tech giant in 2015 shut down app developers' ability to siphon off the data of Facebook users who used their apps.

Source: ABC News March 21, 2018 20:38 UTC