DATA scraped from price comparison websites like moneysupermarket.com may have been used by a company owned by billionaire Brexit backer Arron Banks.
According to the Observer, anyone using price comparison to search for insurance, loans, mortgages, utilities, and entering the sensitive data necessary for a quote, could have had their data shared with Eldon, the umbrella group for a number of insurance brands including the GoSkippy brand owned by the self proclaimed bad boy of Brexit.
That would have been perfectly legal, with the privacy terms making clear that such data sharing may occur.
But the evidence of Cambridge Analytica whistleblower, Brittany Kaiser, to the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport select committee gives that sharing a sinister edge.
Last week the former director of the controversial data firm said she believed there was a flow of data between Ukip, Leave.EU, and Banks’s insurance company Eldon.
Those allegations have been vehemently denied.
She told MPs that Banks wanted a way combine data from different sources in order to profile and then target voters in the European referendum: “He asked us to design a strategy where we could work with Leave.EU, Ukip and Eldon Insurance data together,” she said.
She also submitted documents that showed “complementary work streams” for Ukip, Leave.EU and Eldon insurance.
The Leave.EU campaign was based inside the Edlon headquarters in Bristol.
In its last annual report, Moneysupermarket said that it held data on 24.9 million people – or about half the British electorate.
A spokesman for Moneysupermarket said: “Our providers use the personal information from our customers to generate personalised quotes for the service they have asked for (such as quoting for car insurance) and are not allowed to use this information for anything else unless they have permission from the customer.”
Lawyers for Banks and Eldon said the allegations were “highly defamatory”.
Meanwhile, the SNP has dismissed as “fantasy” a claim that they met with CA because they wanted a leave vote to in the EU referendum.
Last week Nicola Sturgeon confirmed a consultant hired by the party met with the political strategy firm in February 2016.
According to the Sunday Times, the SNP’s consultant met Julian Wheatland, chairman of CA parent group, SCL.
The paper’s source says when it was pointed out to Wheatland that the SNP wanted Britain to remain in the EU, he responded: “No they don’t, they want another [independence] referendum ... They won’t say that publicly, but they want us to leave, so they can get another independence vote’.
An SNP spokesman said: “This is utter concoction and fantasy without a shred of basis in truth or fact.”
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