New Delhi: In the first ever official confirmation of the possible scope of the data leak, which was previously estimated in news reports, Facebook Inc said on Wednesday that personal information of as many as 87 million people, most of them in the US, may have been improperly shared with data firm Cambridge Analytica.
About 270,000 people downloaded a personality quiz app and shared information about themselves and their friends with a researcher, who then passed along the information to Cambridge Analytica, in a move that Facebook says was against its rules.
The 87 million figure is much higher than the 50 million people estimated in earlier reports. Facebook made the new disclosure in an online posting on Wednesday. Facebook said it will tell people, in a notice at the top of their news feeds starting April 9, if their information may have been improperly shared with Cambridge Analytica.
