Facebook also said data on as many as 87 million people, majority in the USA, may have been improperly shared with research firm Cambridge Analytica. Malicious actors had been abusing a feature that let users search for one another by typing in email addresses or phone numbers into Facebook’s search box.
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As per a table of compromised users, most of the personal information that may have been improperly shared with Cambridge Analytica are from the U.S. – 70.8 million or 81 per cent. Indonesia and the United Kingdom stand a distant second with 1.1 million users’ data being compromised.
Facebook will also show users the applications they’ve used and information that was shared.
According to the Facebook chief, at the time, they demanded and received a formal certification from the firm that it had deleted all user data acquired through improper means. Facebook said on Wednesday that as many as 87 million people might have had their data accessed – an increase from the 50 million disclosed in published reports.
FROM 50 million to 2.2 billion in a matter of weeks, Facebook has finally revealed the true extent of shady data gathering on its platform – and it affects all users.
Chief executive Mark Zuckerberg is due to testify before the US Congress next week, in what is expected to be multiple congressional hearings over the scandal. For the tailored experience, Facebook will explain how your data is used and why it is needed to customize the posts and ads you see on the platform.
“When you are building something like Facebook that is unprecedented in the world, there are going to be things that you mess up”, Zuckerberg said.
“We’ve recently made significant updates to make our privacy tools easier to find, restrict data access on Facebook, and make our Terms and Data Policy clearer“.
Zuckerberg says that harm includes “fake news, foreign interference in elections, hate speech, in addition to developers and data privacy”.
The data was gathered through a personality test app called “This Is Your Digital Life” that was downloaded by fewer than 200,000 people.
“The investigation will consider whether Facebook has breached the Australian Privacy Act 1988 (Privacy Act)”.
Call and text history doesn’t collect message data, but rather who you message/call most frequently.
The 311,127 Australians who Facebook suspects had their data shared amount to 0.4% of the users affected by the data breach.
Whistleblower Christopher Wylie’s Facebook account was suspended after he came forward with allegations that Cambridge Analytica improperly acquired users’ profile data.
He’s set to appear before the House Energy and Commerce Committee next Wednesday at 10:00 a.m. ET to talk about the “company’s use and protection of user data”.
After word of the breach surfaced last month, Canada’s privacy commissioner launched an investigation to determine whether Facebook respected the federal privacy law covering private companies.
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Mr Zuckerberg is due to testify about the matter next week during two United States congressional hearings, and the data breach has drawn criticism from lawmakers and regulators around the world.
