Social media giant Facebook previously expressed uncertainty over how many users in Singapore were affected in the massive data leak involving British political consultancy firm Cambridge Analytica, but now they have a figure: 65,009.
Information from the accounts of over 65,000 Facebook users in Singapore may have been “improperly shared”, according to the company, TODAY reported. This, however, is a small drop in the total number of accounts that may have been leaked to Cambridge Analytica (CA), which number over 87 million worldwide. That’s way higher than the initially estimated figure of 50 million.
The numbers were disclosed in a press release issued yesterday, which also revealed that most of the people affected (81.6 percent) reside in the United States, while the Philippines and Indonesia followed close behind in second and third place in the list of affected countries.
A quick primer on the Cambridge Analytica saga: Cambridge Analytica (CA) is a data-mining and data-analysis firm that participated in American politics and worked for Donald Trump’s presidential campaign in 2016. Dr. Aleksandr Logan, a lecturer at the University of Cambridge, created a Facebook app that claimed to be a research tool for psychologists by offering personality predictions to users — it required access to user profiles, locations, preferences, and their friends’ data.
Dr. Logan, however, sent the user data he collected to CA without user permission. Such information can be used to build digital profiles and identify personal preferences — patterns that can be used to predict and influence voters.
The misuse of data, bolstered by CA’s microtargetting capabilities, is now suspected of having played significant parts in the American presidential, Brexit elections, and President Rodrigo Duterte’s rise to power in the Philippines.
Following the reveal, the Personal Data Protection Commission (PDPC) in Singapore is reportedly looking into the matter, and is in close contact with Facebook for investigations.
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