Apparently, the Facebook data breach might be even worse than previously thought, and far more than 87 million users may have been impacted, Daily News reports.
Brittany Kaiser, who worked as a business development director for consulting firm Cambridge Analytica, testified for the British Parliament about the company. Kaiser claims they used multiple questionnaires such as the "sex compass" in order to gather information. This revelation comes after Facebook already had to admit that its initial estimates of 50 million impacted users were too low. "I believe it is almost certain that the number of Facebook users whose data was compromised through routes similar to that used by Kogan is much greater than 87 million, and that both Cambridge Analytica and other unconnected companies and campaigns were involved in these activities," Kaiser said. She did not, however, offer up details about the kind of data that was gathered.
Just last month, both companies came under fire after it was revealed data was being collected and stored without proper consent, and used for political purposes. While Cambridge Analytica claims they deleted the data and don't use it, whistleblower Christopher Wylie says the collected data was used to target voters in the last Presidential election, first for Sen. Ted Cruz and then Donald Trump. Last week, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg gave a 10-hour testimony to Congress about the scandal. In it, he confirmed that upwards of 87 million people had their data stored after taking a quiz called "This is your digital life," which was developed by researcher Aleksandr Kogan, but Kaiser's testimony revealed there is an even wider range of Facebook-based surveys that were also collecting data.
With this new information, the backlash against the social network is likely to continue, particularly as more users are checking if they were impacted by the breach, finding the data that Facebook stores about them regularly, and deleting their accounts altogether.
