Facebook referred to EU watchdog

Britain’s information watchdog has asked Facebook’s lead European regulator to investigate how the company targets, monitors and shows adverts to users, saying it was concerned about some practices at the world’s biggest social network.

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 from a researcher. The British watchdog said on Tuesday as part of that inquiry 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.

A spokeswoman for the British watchdog said it had been made aware of fake political adverts on the network.