Actual No. of Facebook Users Affected by Data Leaks is 87 M Not 57 M

Facebook has revealed the new figure for the number of users whose data was shared with the political consultancy Cambridge Analytica. Previously, Whistleblower Christopher Wylie said that more than 50 million people were affected, but now Facebook has admitted that the exact number is up to 87 million, that is reveled by Facebook CTO Mike Schroepfer.

The company has also accepted that the United States-based users were affected largely.

Actual No. of Facebook Users Affected by Data Leaks is 87 M

Facebook has also claimed that it has removed a feature that let users enter phone numbers or email addresses into Facebook’s search tool to find other people. That was being used by malicious actors to scrape public profile information.

Facebook also said:

Data on as many as 87 million people, most of them in the U.S., may have been improperly shared with research firm Cambridge Analytica. This is Facebook’s first official confirmation of the possible scope of the data leak, which was previously estimated at roughly 50 million. It has resulted in calls from legislators and policy makers for greater regulation of social media, helping to shave billion of dollars from the company’s market value.

Facebook Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg said on a conference call with reporters:

“We didn’t take a broad enough view of what our responsibility was and that was a huge mistake. It was my mistake, we’re broadening our view of our responsibility.”

Zuckerberg claimed that an internal audit had uncovered a fresh problem. The company said that now people will also be able to remove the apps that they no longer want.

This step taken by the company is appreciable, but still people want answers of their questions and Facebook is not responding.

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