Facebook raised the number of users whose information was improperly shared with Cambridge Analytica to 87 million Wednesday, up from previous estimates of 50 million.
Facebook issued the updated number in a lengthy post by CTO Mike Schroepfer about its privacy changes, which include restricting third party app access and deleting phone call and text information that’s over a year old.
Facebook also said it’s ending a feature that lets users search for a profile using a phone number or personal email, and suggested that bad actors have abused the ability and taken information from personal profiles as a result.
“Given the scale and sophistication of the activity we’ve seen, we believe most people on Facebook could have had their public profile scraped in this way,” Schroepfer said in the post. “So we have now disabled this feature.”
Cambridge Analytica was accused of improperly gaining access to personal information of Facebook users, spurring legal probes and changes to Facebook’s privacy policies.
Media reports last month alleged a UK-based researcher collected the data from Facebook users when just 270,000 users downloaded a psychology quiz app that requested access to their personal data.
Facebook’s policies regarding third party apps at the time allowed apps to request the data of users who downloaded the apps and those users’ friends, impacting a much larger swath of people.
Facebook has said since that it ended that practice years ago.
Schroepfer’s post Wednesday outlined specific ways in which Facebook is restricting the types and amounts of data third party apps can access about users.
This is breaking news. Please check back for updates.
