Facebook Starts Notifying Users Whose Data Might Have Been Accessed By Cambridge Analytica

Facebook has begun to notify users if they’re among the 87 million people whose information might have been compromised for use by the political research firm Cambridge Analytica.

Notifications will begin appearing this week on the top of users’ news feed, alerting them if they or a friend had ever logged in to the “This Is Your Digital Life” app, the personality quiz at the center of the data scandal.

Facebook since has banned the app, which sold information harvested from millions of users’ profile pages — details such as birthdate, current address and page likes — to Cambridge Analytica, a data-mining firm that worked on behalf of Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign that used the information to try and influence voters. It was founded by then-future-now-former White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon and billionaire GOP mega-donor Robert Mercer.

Users can consult a help page on Facebook to learn if their information was shared.

“There is more work to do,” Facebook acknowledges in its notice. “But we are committed to confronting abuse and to putting you in control of your privacy.”

Facebook began making the disclosures as its founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, testified before Congress about the privacy scandal, its handling of users’ personal data and broader questions about how the social network is working to avoid manipulation by foreign actors during the 2018 midterm elections.