Facebook Suspends Crimson Hexagon Over Data Breaches

Facebook Suspends Crimson Hexagon Over Data Breaches

Facebook has suspended a US-based analytics firm, Crimson Hexagon over concerns about the collection and sharing of user data.

The Boston-based firm describes itself as offering “consumer insights” and has contracts with government agencies around the world.

And Facebook said it was looking into whether some of these deals were in violation of its policies on surveillance following the Cambridge Analytica scandal that rocked the social media giant earlier this year.

The BBC reports that Crimson Hexagon has “contracts to analyse public Facebook data for clients including a Russian nonprofit with ties to the Kremlin and multiple US government agencies”.

Facebook prohibited user data being used for government surveillance following pressure from civil liberties groups concerned about the targeting of dissidents and protesters.

“We don’t allow developers to build surveillance tools using information from Facebook or Instagram,” a Facebook spokesman said in a statement on Friday.

“We take these allegations seriously, and we have suspended these apps while we investigate.”

Crimson Hexagon works with a data set that includes, according to its own website, more than one trillion social media posts taken from Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and others.

The company says it analyses more than 160m photographs posted online every day from which it gives insight to clients which include kitmakers Adidas and tech giants Samsung.