Congress and BJP spar over data leak: Facebook playing with privacy of users?

Facebook, the popular social media platform used by over 2 billion people, is having a pretty harrowing month after revealing to the world that it suspended Strategic Communications Laboratories (SCL) along with its political data analytics firm Cambridge Analytica for gaining access to data of around 50 million users to target ads during the 2016 US elections. Over the past week, the Facebook data scandal has resulted in widespread criticism over the company's failure to protect users' data.

The social media giant is facing the heat after Cambridge Analytica, a British consulting company, was accused of harvesting data of up to 50 million Facebook users without permission and using the data to help politicians, including US President Donald Trump and the Brexit campaign.

Cambridge Analytica received the user data from a Facebook app years ago that purported to be a psychological research tool, however, the firm was not authorised to have that information.