In a written communication to Cambridge Analytica (CA) on Wednesday, the Union government castigated the company for being “cryptic” and answering questions with the intention to “conceal more than reveal”.
The government also said the company had to be more transparent about its activities related to influencing electoral voting.
Cambridge Analytica on April 3, 2018 replied to the Union government’s initial questions regarding its role in using Indian Facebook users’ data without consent.
“You may be aware that in the meantime on April 5, 2018, Facebook informed that data of estimated 5,62,455 Indians, may have been accessed by you through 335 installations of the app developed by GSR and installed by Indians,” the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology wrote to CA.
The company has till May 10, 2018 to answer additional queries.
In a separate letter to Facebook, the Ministry asked it what security measures was the company taking on an urgent basis to ensure that data concerning Indians “are not pilfered or manipulated again for extraneous purposes including to influence the elections”.
