Alexander Nix

Alexander Nix was the chief executive of Cambridge Analytica, the political data firm involved in the 2018 Facebook data controversy. He settled deception charges brought by the US Federal Trade Commission in 2019 and gave a UK director disqualification undertaking in 2020.

SCL Elections and Cambridge Analytica

SCL Elections Limited was incorporated in England on 17 October 2012, with a registered office in Tunbridge Wells, Kent, under the SIC code for “other information service activities not elsewhere classified”. Cambridge Analytica operated as the group’s political data business. SCL Elections filed accounts only through 31 December 2016 and a final confirmation statement in October 2017; the company was dissolved on 31 January 2026.

What the FTC Found

The FTC’s account, in its complaint and the settlements it announced on 24 July 2019, is specific about the mechanism. Aleksandr Kogan, a Facebook app developer, operated the GSRApp — also known as “thisisyourdigitallife” — which asked users to answer personality questions and collected their page likes and those of their Facebook friends. During the summer of 2014, Kogan, Cambridge Analytica and Nix developed and analysed data from the app to train an algorithm generating personality scores for app users and their friends, and matched those scores to US voter records for the firm’s voter profiling and targeted advertising services. Facebook ended app developers’ access to friends’ data in April 2014.

The FTC alleged that Cambridge Analytica, Nix and Kogan deceived consumers by claiming the survey collected no personally identifiable information. Nix and Kogan agreed to administrative orders restricting how they conduct business in future and requiring them to delete or destroy the personal information collected. Cambridge Analytica, by then in bankruptcy, did not settle.

The same day, the FTC announced a $5 billion penalty and a twenty-year privacy order against Facebook for violating its 2012 FTC order — a “related, but separate” matter in the Commission’s own words.

Director Disqualification

Nix gave a disqualification undertaking on 14 September 2020 in relation to his conduct at SCL Elections Limited, under section 7 of the Company Directors Disqualification Act 1986. It runs from 5 October 2020 to 4 October 2026 — six years. This page previously stated seven; the register does not support that.

Digital Political Impact

• The FTC record establishes a concrete mechanism — a personality quiz app, friends’ data, scores matched to voter files — distinct from the “psychographic targeting” claim the firm marketed
• The episode produced the largest US privacy penalty against a platform to that date, and personal orders against the firm’s chief executive and the app developer
• It produced a UK director disqualification, which is a finding about corporate conduct rather than about the data claims

What Is Not Established Here

Removed for want of a source that met this project’s standard: the claim that Nix joined SCL in 2003 after a career in financial analysis; that Cambridge Analytica was founded in 2013 as an offshoot; that it worked in more than 40 named regions or on the 2014 midterms and the Cruz primary campaign; the Mercer family funding and Steve Bannon board membership as stated facts; the details and date of the Channel 4 News undercover recording and of Nix’s suspension; the May 2, 2018 closure announcement; and the claim that the firm’s data covered “millions” without a figure attached to a source. The FTC says “tens of millions of Facebook users”; that is the figure this page uses.