Social media network Facebook on Wednesday admitted that it may have shared information about 562,455 subscribers in India — 0.6 percent of the complete count — with Cambridge Analytica.
The above image is from the U.S. when India prime minister Narendra Modi visited Facebook headquarters.
Facebook’s business client Cambridge Analytica uses such data for influencing voters during elections in India. Facebook has not specified whether it used that information for its clients.
The number of subscribes whose data was shared with the UK-based political consultancy was 87 million and not 50 million, Facebook’s chief technology officer Mike Schroepfer said in a blog.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said he had made a “huge mistake” personally by not focusing on data privacy.
Zuckerberg also faced questions for the first time about his suitability to run the company he founded after he dropped out of Harvard. He answered in the affirmative, but questions are beginning to be raised.
Zuckerberg, who is expected to appear before a US congressional committee on April 11, has not directly and adequately addressed questions raised about compromising data about its Indian subscribers, who are second in size worldwide only to those in the United States.
India Government earlier asked Facebook to provide information by April 7 about breach of data about its Indian subscribers and whether that information was used to manipulate the outcome of an election.
