5.62 lakh Indians hit by data breach, admits Facebook
We have now are that only 335 people in India installed the app, which is 0.1 per cent of the app's total world-wide installs.
New Delhi: Facebook said that around 5.62 lakh people in India could have been impacted by the data breach undertaken allegedly by UK based political consultancy firm Cambridge Analytica.
Facebook said that globally personal information of up to 87 million users, mostly in the United States, may have been improperly shared with Cambridge Analytica, up from a previous news media estimate of more than 50 million.
Last month government had issued a notice to Facebook seeking to know whether personal data of Indian voters and users was compromised by Cambridge Analytica. In its response to government, Facebook said that the company is investigating the specific number of people whose information was accessed by the app, including those in India.
“Cambridge Analytica’s acquisition of Facebook data through the app developed by Dr Aleksandr Kogan and his company Global Science Research Limited (GSR) happened without our authorisation was an explicit violation of our platform policies,” said Facebook.
“We have now are that only 335 people in India installed the app, which is 0.1 per cent of the app’s total world-wide installs. We further understand that 5,62,120 additional people in India were potentially affected, as friends of people who installed the App. This yields a total of 562,455 affected people in India, which is 0.6 per cent of the global number,” said Facebook spokesperson.
However, it said that the information currently available to it is limited to people who installed the app throughout its lifetime on the Facebook.