Although the majority of users affected by the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica scandal were from the US, other countries are also learning about the extent of data gathering. Users in India was also reportedly affected with the official number now being pegged at just over 5.6 lakh accounts.
According to a tweet from former NDTV Managing Editor and current Washington Post Contributing Editor, Barkha Dutt, a Facebook spokesperson has officially confirmed that the personal data of almost 6 lakh Indian users of Facebook might have been accessed by Cambridge Analytica, thanks to the now-infamous quiz app from Kogan Mobile called ‘This is Your Digital Life’.
Facebook will notify users in India whose accounts were affected by the scraping, just like it has done in the US for some users.
As has been widely reported already, the quiz was administered on Facebook by a company called Global Science Research (GSR), which was run by the notorious psychology researcher at the University of Cambridge, Dr. Aleksandr Kogan.
It’s not immediately known what Cambridge Analytica did with all the data scraped from Indian users, but the practice is thought to have continued until December 2015, when Facebook suspended Kogan from its platform for selling user-data without permission.
Additionally, Facebook has advised the government to pull up Cambridge Analytica about the data scraping:
The Indian government is yet to release an official statement about Facebook’s findings for users in India. It’s likely the Cambridge Analytica’s Indian subsidiaries and partners may be investigated, given that the government had said it would come down hard on any data scraping for political purposes.
