https://www.theverge.com/2018/5/15/17358802/facebook-cambridge-analytica-justice-department-fbi-investigation

The Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation have launched an inquiry into Cambridge Analytica, the data mining firm that last month announced it would be shutting down amid the Facebook privacy scandal that embroiled the social network starting back in March. The investigation, the existence of which was first reported this evening by The New York Times, is still in the early stages and we don’t yet know if it has anything to do with Cambridge Analytica’s connections to the 2016 presidential campaign of President Donald Trump, according to The Times.

The firm supposedly provided ad targeting expertise for Trump’s campaign based on data it acquired from Cambridge psychology professor Aleksandr Kogan, who gathered the data on as many as 87 million Facebook users using a quiz app that siphoned the information from its users’ friends lists. Kogan then packaged and sold that data in violation of Facebook’s terms of service. The DOJ and FBI are reportedly looking into whether Cambridge Analytica violated American election laws by acquiring the data and using it to inform its services, which were based on the idea that such data could help campaigns create profiles of American voters whose behaviors could then be swayed by specific ad targeting.