Facebook to contact 87 million users over data leak – with 60,000 potentially impacted in South Africa

 ·9 Apr 2018
Facebook logo

Facebook will contact 87 million users on Monday to inform them their data was leaked to Cambridge Analytica, The Guardian reported.

The majority of affected users – 70 million – are from the United States; however, in South Africa, 59,777 users were potentially impacted, MyBroadband reported.

The data was obtained through an app called “thisisyourdigitallife”, a personality test which was developed by Cambridge University academic Aleksandr Kogan.

Facebook users who used the app shared information about their Facebook friends in the process, resulting in the data of people being collected.

Kogan then shared the data with Cambridge Analytica, and Facebook said this was against its terms of use.

According to Facebook, 33 users in South Africa installed Kogan’s app. In total, 59,777 users were potentially impacted in South Africa.

These include friends of those who would have installed the app elsewhere in the world.

“Everyone globally on their Facebook page will see an alert leading them to the apps setting where they can review the apps they’ve allowed to access to their data,” said Facebook.

“Additionally, those potentially impacted by Cambridge Analytica will also see the alert with additional language which will then take them to see what data might have been shared.”

Countries like the UK, Philippines, and Indonesia have over a million people each who may have had their personal information harvested.

All 2.2 billion users on Facebook will also receive a “Protecting Your Information” notice. It will include a link to see what apps you use and what information has been shared with those apps.

From there, Facebook will let you turn off apps individually, or disable third-party access.


Read: It’s time to make our privacy tools easier to find: Facebook

Show comments
Subscribe to our daily newsletter