Last week, Facebook nearly doubled its estimate for the number of users whose personal data had been harvested by Cambridge Analytica. Since the scandal first broke, the social media giant has endured criticisms from political and pop cultural sources alike, especially since additional revelations about the company’s practices have made it and Mark Zuckerberg look even worse. Hence why Facebook’s CEO is set to appear before multiple congressional committees, though not before they begin telling users today whether or not their account information was shared with Cambridge Analytica.
As CNN points out, last week a large brief from Facebook indicated that users would be informed whether their personal data had been scraped by Cambridge Analytica and other third party apps or groups. “We’ll show people a link at the top of their News Feed so they can see what apps they use — and the information they have shared with those apps. People will also be able to remove apps that they no longer want,” read the statement. “As part of this process we will also tell people if their information may have been improperly shared with Cambridge Analytica.”
Facebook also provided mockups of the two notifications users might receive. If you log onto your account and receive a message like the one on the left, then your account’s data was not shared with Cambridge Analytica before, during, or after the 2016 presidential election. If the message reads like the one on the right, however, then Cambridge Analytica obtained your data.
Seeing as how Facebook estimates that 87 million users had their data shared with Cambridge Analytica, whereas over 2 billion use the platform across the globe, most will likely receive the notification on the left. If you happen to see the one on the right, however, follow the prompt’s instructions in order to find out precisely how your account was affected, and what steps you can take to protect your data.