Facebook has admitted that the Cambridge Analytica data slurping scandal has actually affected way more people than first revealed, with up to 87 million consumers – including over 1 million Brits – now thought to have had their information exploited.
In response, Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg said “clearly we should have done more, and we will going forward”.
During a press conference he admitted: “Today, given what we know… I think we understand that we need to take a broader view of our responsibility.
“That we’re not just building tools, but that we need to take full responsibility for the outcomes of how people use those tools as well.”
Zuckerberg also revealed that an internal audit had uncovered that “malicious actors” had been abusing a feature that let users search for one another by typing in email addresses or phone numbers into Facebook’s search box.
As a result, many people’s public profile information had been “scraped” and matched to the contact details, which had been obtained from elsewhere. Facebook claims it has now blocked the scheme.
Zuckerberg added: “It is reasonable to expect that if you had that [default] setting turned on, that in the last several years someone has probably accessed your public information in this way.”
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