Britain’s Information Commissioner has been investigating the use of data analytics to influence politics after consultancy Cambridge Analytica obtained the personal data of 87 million Facebook users.

The British watchdog said [...] it had also found broader issues at Facebook, which it had referred to Ireland’s data regulator, the lead supervisor for the social network in the European Union...

Facebook said it looked forward to discussing the matter. “We regularly engage with regulators regarding our advertising tools, which we believe fully comply with EU data protection laws,” a spokeswoman said.

Ireland’s Data Protection Commission (DPC) said it would assess the information and decide what steps were required...

The Commissioner has also [...] sent assessment notices to data brokers including Acxiom...

Acxiom said in a statement that it would cooperate fully with the Information Commissioner and that in Britain it does not host, offer or process any “special category” data, as defined by the GDPR...

Facebook had said earlier in October that advertisers that mentioned political figures, material or parties would be obliged to provide evidence of their identity and location and state on Facebook who was paying for the ad.

Facebook has also sought to give users more control over their privacy by making data management easier.