Facebook Exposed 87 Million Users to Cambridge Analytica
Facebook now says the data firm Cambridge Analytica gained unauthorized access to up to 87 million users' data, mainly in the United States. This figure is far higher than the 50 million users that were previously reported.
Facebook's chief technology officer Mike Schroepfer shared this figure at the end of a lengthy—and somewhat unrelated—blog post Wednesday that laid out a slew of changes Facebook is making to restrict access to user data.
"In total, we believe the Facebook information of up to 87 million people—mostly in the US—may have been improperly shared with Cambridge Analytica," Schroepfer wrote toward the bottom of the post. Schroepfer noted that beginning April 9, Facebook will make it possible for users to see if their data was exposed to Cambridge Analytica. Unlike the well-hidden tool Facebook created to tell users whether they'd interacted with Russian trolls in the past, the new Cambridge Analytica disclosure will appear at the top of users' News Feeds.
