Facebook confirms an extra leak of 30 Million more users to Cambridge Analytica.

Facebook has now revealed that data of over 87 million users was shared with the political consultancy firm Cambridge Analytica (37 million more than the previous estimates). According to the reports, the data was scraped by Cambridge psychology professor Aleksandr Kogan’s survey app via Facebook Login.

Facebook now estimates that approx 305,000 people had installed the This Is Your Digital Life quiz that had was responsible for data-scraping. The figure previously suggested had been 270,000.

According to the reports, about 97% of the installations occurred within the US though, over 16 million of the total users affected are thought to be from other countries.

Facebook revealed the information via a blog post(link is given below) written by CTO Mike Schroepfer. The blog post also mentioned about its privacy changes, which include restricting third-party app access and deleting phone call and text information that’s over a year old.

Besides this, Facebook said that it is 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.

Starting today, these privacy changes will now be implemented:

• Third-party apps will no longer be able to access the member list of a group.
• Third-party apps can no longer access personal information, such as names and profile photos etc.
• Facebook is also limiting the use of the Pages API by requiring all future access to the entire access layer be approved by the company
• Third-party apps can no longer ask for personal data like religious views, political affiliation, relationship status, custom friends list, education and work history, and activity on fitness, book reading, music listening etc.
• Facebook is also changing its opt-in call and text history feature on Messenger and Facebook Lite on Android
• Facebook will no longer let anyone input a user’s phone number or email address to find them on the social network.

Privacy today is an Urban Legend. Tech Companies, whether big or small, all are equipped with some reasoning to collect user data at mass. The difference in how they truly use it versus what they tell us how it is used is what the big variable is. Data is the new Oil, its the most valued resource on the globe today and one thing that consumers need to accept it: Nothing is Free, if it is, you are the product being sold.