Amidst data theft allegations, Facebook remains to be Election Commission partner

The Election Commission of India (ECI), which announced a partnership with Facebook in June last year to launch voter registration reminder, will continue to work with the social media company for the Karnataka assembly poll.

The Election Commission, however, added the precautions will be taken.

After the scandal of Facebook’s data breach came into light, the ECI signaled the possibility of reviewing its relationship with the social networking platform.

Last year, Facebook introduced ‘Register Now’ button to encourage Indian citizens to register themselves with the ECI.

In 2017, from 1st July to 4th July, the social networking site sent voter registration reminder to people on Facebook in India who are eligible to vote. The reminder was sent in 13 Indian languages - English, Hindi, Gujarati, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Kannada, Punjabi, Bengali, Urdu, Assamese, Marathi and Oriya.

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Recently, Facebook was found itself embroiled in a controversy. Last week, The Observer published the account of a former worker at data firm Cambridge Analytica, who lifted the lid on the company’s relationship with Facebook.

Christopher Wylie revealed how an academic, Aleksandr Kogan, had harvested data from users via a personality quiz on the social network and, through his company Global Science Research (GSR), had shared it with Cambridge Analytica. Since then, there have been more revelations about both firms and about the way consumers’ data is used.

The development was first reported by Medianama.