562,000 Indian users may have been affected by data breach: Facebook

Social media giant Facebook said today that 562,000 people in India were “potentially affected” by global data leak episode involving UK-based Cambridge Analytica.

Facebook has over 200 million 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.

Facebook had yesterday admitted that data on about 87 million people – mostly in the US – may have been improperly shared with Cambridge Analytica.

A Facebook spokesperson said that while 335 people in India were directly affected through 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 per cent 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.

The past few days have seen a global outrage over the breach of user data on Facebook, forcing the company to issue an 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.