How quiz app helped Donald Trump find his voters

Alexsandr Kogan

It was one of hundreds of cute questionnaires that were shared widely on Facebook and other social media, like "Which Pokemon are you?" and "What are your most used words?"

An app called "thisismydigitallife", was a personality quiz, asking questions about how outgoing a person is, how vengeful one can be, whether one finishes projects, worries a lot, likes art, or is talkative. About 3,20,000 people took the quiz, designed by Alexsandr Kogan.

Kogan was contracted to do it by Cambridge Analytica, founded by US Republican supporters, including Steve Bannon, who would become the strategist for Donald Trump. Because Kogan's app was circulated via Facebook, it reaped far more than just the information on those who took the test.

At the time, in 2015, such apps could scrape up all the personal details of not only the quiz-taker, but all their Facebook friends. That ultimately became a horde of data on some 50 million Facebook users - their personal information, their likes, their places, their pictures, and their networks.

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