British communications firm hired by Donald Trump’s presidential campaign has said it “strongly denies” allegations it inappropriately harvested data on 50 million Facebook users.

Cambridge Analytica has defended its work and the allegations in a statement:

“This Facebook data was not used by Cambridge Analytica as part of the services it provided to the Donald Trump presidential campaign; personality targeted advertising was not carried out for this client either.”

A value of $45 billion was wiped off Facebook as a result of the controversy.

A whistleblower has said the company helped develop an application on Facebook to paid individuals to take a survey.

But if users didn’t adjust their privacy settings, it captured as much data as possible.

Ross Greenwood speaks with Nigel Phair, analyst at the Centre for Internet Safety at the Universtiy of Canberra.

“The data was already being collected by Facebook, but this is being harvested by a third-party organisation.

“It created an app which allowed the users to not only give up all their details, but a lot of the details of their friends.

“Facebook would argue this is no data breach in any of this… so it’s a little bit funny this one.”

Listen to the full interview below