Following the Digital Footprints
As UK investigators sifted through the ruins of the Cambridge Analytica affair, they kept finding clues that pointed in an unsettling direction: Russia.
The UK Information Commissioner’s Office discovered IP addresses and a server linked to Aleksandr Kogan—the academic behind the data-harvesting app—located in Russia and nearby countries. Some of these addresses were connected to an earlier application built at Cambridge University’s Psychometrics Centre, and were tied to a Tor entry point and alleged past cyber attacks.
Cloning a Psychometrics Engine
Cambridge Analytica couldn’t access the Psychometrics Centre’s official database. Instead, they turned to an insider: Kogan, who built a “clone” of the Centre’s profiling technology through his private company, Global Science Research. His app, "thisisyourdigitallife," collected public profiles, birth dates, locations, page likes, and friends’ data, then shared these datasets and derivatives with Cambridge Analytica.
Kogan later testified that Facebook had supposedly denied him permission to access users’ timelines and private messages. Yet the mechanics he described appeared to contradict Facebook’s narrative, a discrepancy also noted by regulators.
Lukoil’s Curious Interest
Another thread led to Russian oil giant Lukoil. Cambridge Analytica’s director Alexander Nix denied meaningful ties, but whistleblower Christopher Wylie said Lukoil was keenly interested in how the firm used data for political targeting, not fuel marketing.
Science or Spycraft?
Pressed on his Russian connections, Kogan downplayed his role in a grant at Saint Petersburg State University, calling it basic research on cyberbullying and dismissing attempts to equate it with “spycraft” as “silly.”
No grand conspiracy was definitively proven here. But the overlapping servers, IPs, and corporate inquiries left a lasting impression: in the age of data-driven politics, the line between academic research, corporate ambition, and geopolitical intrigue can be disturbingly thin.