Facebook has told SA’s information regulator that almost 100,000 people in the country were affected by its data leak — far more than estimated.
Last week the information regulator said it would "proactively and voluntarily engage Facebook with regards to the alleged data breach", and that it would ask the company to clarify the extent of the data leak and to state what corrective measures it was taking.
This was after the personal information of about 87-million Facebook users – mostly in the US — was misused by Cambridge Analytica, a political consultancy that obtained the data from a personality app.
Facebook initially estimated the personal information of 59,777 of its users in SA had been wrongfully shared with Cambridge Analytica.
But Facebook’s Ireland-based head of data protection, Yvonne Cunnane, said in a letter to the information regulator on Wednesday that 96,134 people in SA were "potentially affected". That included 13 people who installed the YourDigitalLife app, along with their connections, Cunnane said.
The app did not obtain "sensitive account information" such as passwords or financial information, she said.
Facebook was informing affected users and would also investigate apps on its platform with access to large amounts of data before its policies were changed in 2014.
World Wide Worx MD Arthur Goldstuck said last week though there were campaigns to abandon Facebook, the Cambridge Analytica scandal was unlikely to dent user numbers in SA.
"The latest numbers show that Facebook is incredibly deeply entrenched with 19-million users in SA," Goldstuck said. But people already frustrated with social media were likely to ditch the platform, he said
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