Cambridge Analytica: 87 Million Users Data was affected, not 50 Million

On April 4, US time, Facebook Chief Technology Officer Mike Schroepfer issued a statement on the official website describing the series of measures recently taken by Facebook to strengthen privacy protection after the data breach.But he also said that Cambridge Analytica obtains information from Facebook users up to 87 million, more than 50 million before a lot more.Of these, more than 80% of users are Americans.

Facebook plans to notify all affected users on Monday, April 9, and display a notification message at the top of their Facebook timeline.At the same time, Facebook also plans to send another notice reminding all users (not only the affected 87 million people) to see applications that can access their Facebook data and let users delete software they do not want to use.

In order to prevent some users from ignoring these reminders, they do not review their account security.Facebook will also take other countermeasures: If the user does not use the app in the past three months, it will automatically reduce the application’s access to user data.

In addition to reminding users, Facebook also announced other updates, including:

• Updates to the site’s data policy and terms of service.
• Apps won’t have access to Facebook event participants and posts on the event’s wall.
• Apps won’t have access to a Facebook group’s member list.
• Apps that want access to a Facebook group will need to be reviewed by Facebook and approved by the group’s admin.
• Apps won’t have access to the user’s name and photo for comments made inside a Facebook group.
• Facebook staff will review every app that needs to access a Facebook page.
• Apps won’t be able to access a user’s religious or political views, relationship status and details, custom friends lists, education and work history, fitness activity, book reading activity, music listening activity, news reading, video watch activity, and games activity.
• Users won’t be able to search for users using their phone number or email address. Facebook said “malicious actors have abused these features to scrape public profile information by submitting phone numbers or email addresses they already have through search and account recovery.”
• The Facebook Android app will not collect calls and SMS metadata anymore.

However, many security experts believe that lawbreakers have mapped most of Facebook’s user base and related data have been leaked and used by Cambridge as a weapon of political struggle.Facebook’s recent update was just to appease angry users and it seemed to be too late.

Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of Facebook, also released a press conference for the media that day and said: “I will be responsible for what happens.” Some people think that Zuckerberg does not have Manage Facebook’s ability and think that he should give way.But Zuckerberg said that he is still a suitable candidate for the company and he will not dismiss employees because of the scandal.According to foreign media reports, Zuckerberg will testify at the two U.S. congressional hearings on April 10 and April 11.

Source: bleepingcomputer