Facebook says 87M profiles compromised
Company to notify those possibly affected, offer all users EU-mandated controls
WASHINGTON — Facebook on Wednesday said that the data of up to 87 million users may have been improperly shared with a political consulting firm connected to President Donald Trump during the 2016 election — a figure far higher than the estimate of 50 million that had been widely cited since the leak was reported last month.
Mark Zuckerberg, the company’s chief executive, also announced that Facebook would offer all its users the same tools and controls required under European privacy rules. The European rules, which go into effect next month, give people more control over how companies use their digital data.
Facebook had not previously disclosed how many accounts had been harvested by Cambridge Analytica, the firm connected to the Trump campaign. It has also been reluctant to disclose how it was used by Russian-backed actors to influence the 2016 presidential elections.
The new effort to appear more transparent about the data leaks — including a rare question-and-answer session with Zuckerberg and reporters — came just before Zuckerberg’s expected testimony next week on Capitol Hill, where he will most likely face criticism over how the company collects and shares the
personal data of its users. Sheryl Sandberg, Zuckerberg’s top deputy, has several national television interviews scheduled for later this week.
The company said that on Monday it would start telling users whether their information may have been shared with Cambridge Analytica.
Andy Stone, a spokesman for Facebook in Washington, said the 87 million figure was an estimate of the total number of users whose data could have been acquired by Cambridge Analytica. He said that the estimate was calculated by adding up all the friends of the people who had logged into the Facebook app from which Cambridge Analytica collected profile data.
“We wanted to put out the maximum number of people who could have been affected,” Zuckerberg told reporters.
It remains unclear exactly how many users had their personal information accessed by Cambridge Analytica. The firm said Wednesday that it had licensed data for no more than 30 million users of the social network.
Facebook also released a lengthy document describing how it would gather personal data in the future. The company said it would limit the types of data that can be harvested by software used by outside businesses. The changes mean that users will have to give permission before an app can collect information beyond their names and addresses.
The company also said it would no longer allow outsiders to use apps to gather information about the religious or political views of its users. And it will stop using thirdparty data from companies such as Experian and Acxiom to help supplement its own data for ad targeting.
The document revealed that the information on public profiles of the social network’s 2 billion users could have been collected by third-party companies without their explicit consent.
“It’s clear now that we didn’t focus enough on preventing abuse,” Zuckerberg said. “We didn’t take a broad enough view of what our responsibility is. That was a huge mistake, and it was my mistake.”
The Federal Trade Commission is investigating whether Facebook violated a 2011 agreement meant to protect users’ privacy. User data is crucial to the company’s business, because it is used to deliver advertising to users.
Zuckerberg is scheduled to testify about the company’s handling of sensitive user data before the Senate’s Commerce and Judiciary committees on Tuesday and the House Energy and Commerce Committee on Wednesday.