Aleksandr Kogan, a Russian - American psychology professor at Cambridge University, created a Facebook personality app that attracted 270,000 willing participants. (digitaltrends.com)
When Kosinski declined, the Times reports that Cambridge paid Kogan more than $ 800,000 to create his own personality app to harvest data from Facebook users. (arstechnica.com)
At the center of the controversy is a Cambridge University psychology professor, Aleksandr Kogan, who provided Cambridge Analytica with information gleaned from a separate personality app, to which users willingly provided their information. (businessinsider.my)