On Wednesday, Facebook’s Chief Technology Officer Mike Schroepfer revealed in a blog that the initial figure of 50 million users who had their information accessed by Cambridge Analytica was an undercount and it’s actually about 87 million. About 97% of the This Is Your Digital Life Quiz installation happened in the U.S. and just over 16 million users of the total affected are thought to be from other countries. An estimated 305 thousand people had installed the app used to harvest the data, much more than the previously surmised 270 thousand.
Cambridge Analytica has claimed it only had access to about 30 million not the 87 million. The tech officer has also mentioned new steps Facebook intends to take to prevent further issues which consist of some new features; one is to appear at the top of users news feed next week to alert users of apps they no longer want Facebook to access.
Facebook had been criticized when it became known that it had known of the Cambridge Analytica data harvesting since 2015 and had relied on the London-based firm to self-certify that it had deleted the information. The Firm had said that it bought the information from the app creator Dr. Alexander Kogan and was not aware that it had been obtained out of accordance with Facebooks regulations. And at the realization of its crooked root deleted the information, but it has been speculated that some of the data is still around in contrast to the Firm insisting that it had deleted all the obtained data.
Following the scandal, the U.S. House Commerce Committee announced that Mark Zuckerberg is to testify before the committee on April 11 to which Zuckerberg has confirmed. Facebook share prices continue to decline as the company goes through the scandal.
