On Wednesday 4 April, the major US social network giant, Facebook, confirmed that it is in fact 87 million users, instead of the 50 million announced in the press, that had their data used by the Cambridge Analytica company.
Although the vast majority of accounts affected (81.6%) are American users, Europeans have not been spared.
The country included in the list of those most affected and mentioned by the social network is the United Kingdom, with more than a million affected. Nonetheless, 310,000 were affected in Germany, 211,667 in France and 60,967 in Belgium, according to reports from several national press agencies.
For the remainder, the victims identified are Filipinos (1,175,870 - 1.4%), Indonesians (1,096,666 - 1.3%), Mexicans (789,880 - 0.9%), Canadians (622,161 - 0.7 %), Indians (562,455 - 0.6%), Brazilians (443,117 - 0.5%), Vietnamese (427,446 - 0.5%) and Australians (311,127 - 0.4%)
The total number, however, corresponded to a higher band obtained by including the number of friends of the 270,000 people that have downloaded the “thisisyoudigitallife” application. In a telephone interview with the press on Wednesday night, Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Facebook explained, "Given our analysis that it is not more than 87 million. It very well could be less, but we wanted to put out the maximum".
In her letter addressed to Facebook at the end of March, the European Commissioner for Justice, Věra Jourová, gave the social network two weeks to inform her to what extent the personal data of Europeans had been affected, as well as what measures the social network intended to take (see EUROPE 11990). On Wednesday, Facebook provided assurances that it had warned the users affected on 9 April.
Although Mr Zuckerberg confirmed that he would be attending the US Congress on 11 April next for a hearing, no confirmation appears to have been given regarding corresponding European invitations as yet (see EUROPE 11984). During his interview with the press, the head of the social network also indicated that in order to respond to “additional questions from other countries and places” it would be the company's technical director, Mike Shcroepfer, or its product Manager, Chris Cox, who would attend.
Speaking on Twitter on Thursday, the head of the ALDE group in Parliament, Guy Verhofstadt, exclaimed, “I renew my demand for Mark Zuckerberg to appear before Parliament & explain what happened to the data of EU citizens. We need to know what data was improperly harvested, by whom & for what purpose”.
On the same day, Commissioner Jourová will also meet the Chairperson of the Article 29 working party, as well as the office of the British authority in charge of carrying out the European investigation.
On Monday, the LGBTI meeting application, Grindr, became the subject of criticism, after having shared sensitive data from its users with two external providers that included information regarding their HIV status and date of their most recent screening. (Original version in French by Marion Fontana)