Data Leak: Facebook Says 5.62 Lakh People Potentially Affected in India

Social media giant Facebook said today that 5.62 lakh people in India were “potentially affected” by global data leak episode involving UK-based Cambridge Analytica. Facebook has over 20 crore users in the country and the Indian government last month had shot-off notices to both Facebook and Analytica on the data breach issue. Data mining firm Analytica has been accused of harvesting personal information of over millions of Facebook users illegally to influence polls in several countries. The Facebook had yesterday admitted that data on about 87 million people – mostly in the US – may have been improperly shared with Cambridge Analytica.

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A Facebook spokesperson said that while 335 people in India were directly affected by an app installation, another 562,120 people were potentially affected as friends of those users. “This yields a total of 562,455 potentially affected people in India, which is 0.6 percent of the global number of potentially affected people,” Facebook spokesperson added. The company said it is “investigating” the specific number of people whose information was accessed, including those in India.

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The past few days have seen a global outrage over the breach of user data on Facebook, forcing the company to issue a public apology. Facebook’s data breach scandal also sparked a furore in India with IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad last month warning the firm of “stringent” action for any attempt to influence polls through data theft and threatening to summon Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, if needed.

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