NEW YORK — Facebook says 50 million user accounts have been affected by a security breach.

By The Associated Press </s> Facebook estimates 622,161 users in Canada had their data improperly shared with Cambridge Analytica. (Photo by THE CANADIAN PRESS)

OTTAWA — Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg made a public apology Wednesday for his company’s handling of users’ personal information — including more than 620,000 Canadians — as the social media giant faced a growing international uproar over the questionable use of personal data for political purposes.

The company estimates 622,161 users in Canada had their data improperly shared with Cambridge Analytica through apps used by themselves or their friends.

Overall, Facebook says that 87 million of its users worldwide were affected — significantly more than the 50 million originally believed to be affected — with nearly 82 per cent of them believed to be located in the United States.

The company said those affected will find out Monday if their information was improperly shared with Cambridge Analytica.

Zuckerberg said the privacy breach showed his company didn’t take seriously its responsibility towards users “and that was a huge mistake.”

“It was my mistake. So now we have to go through every part of our relationship with people and make sure we’re taking a broad enough view of our responsibility,” he said during an afternoon conference call with reporters.

“It’s not enough to just connect people. We have to make sure those connections are positive and that they bring people closer together.”

Canada’s privacy commissioner said he wasn’t surprised at the magnitude of the number of Canadians affected. Speaking in Toronto, Daniel Therrien said the figure will work into his ongoing investigation about the data breach and whether there were any violations of federal privacy laws.

Facebook is facing its worst privacy scandal ever in the wake of allegations that Cambridge Analytica used data collected without users’ authorization to help Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and possibly other elections. Policy makers in Canada and other countries are now wrestling with how to respond to the spread of “fake news” on social media platforms like Facebook, which announced Wednesday it had also shut down accounts and pages linked to a Russian agency accused of online meddling in foreign elections.

Zuckerberg said the company would bring to 20,000 the number of workers dedicated to battling ”fake news,” as he apologized for initially dismissing the notion that the misinformation campaign had any impact on election outcomes.

The social media giant plans to restrict data access on its platforms, which includes Instagram, to better protect users’ information. Facebook will disable a feature that let anyone search Facebook for a user with their email or phone number, saying in a post that “malicious actors” had used the tool to scrape personal data of most users on Facebook. And starting Monday, it will show people which apps use their Facebook information.

Zuckerberg is set to testify next week before a U.S. congressional committee, and he said top executives at the company would be dispatched to other countries wanting to hold government hearings on the scandal.

Canada’s acting minister for democratic institutions called Facebook’s admission of the scope of the breach “deeply concerning.”

“While Facebook has begun to take initial steps to address these issues, it is clear that much more needs to be done,” Scott Brison said in a statement.

Brison has said he’d be open to strengthening federal privacy laws, which don’t currently apply to political parties. And Zuckerberg appeared open to further regulation in a sector that has so far shied away from government oversight.

International experts in the national capital Wednesday to talk about the issue of “fake news” said the Liberals needed to enact stronger privacy laws to better regulate how social media giants use Canadians’ personal information.

“Since there are insufficient limits on what you can do with personal data, there is no countervailing force,” said David Carroll, an American academic who is suing Cambridge Analytica in the U.K. to gain access to his data.

“We need to realize that privacy legislation will weaken the behemoths in a healthy way.”

Other options put forward included greater transparency for online advertising that would enable users to easily learn who paid for a Facebook ad, how much they spent, how many people viewed it and why the ad targeted the user. Ben Scott, a former adviser in the State Department, said countries should look for ways to restrict the use of personal data for political targeting to avoid the kind of dirty tricks campaigns Cambridge Analytica is accused of conducting.

Sue Gardner, former executive director of Wikimedia Foundation, said there is general opposition south of the border to government regulations in the sector, with a belief that government involvement would make matters worse. Instead, recommendations in the U.S. centre around self-regulation.

“Those are massively insufficient for the scope of the problem,” she said. </s> The latest news is Facebook's data breach was from 87 million users. Initially it was reported that the user data collected was just from 50 million users.

The Facebook data scandal has taken a turn. After media reports confirmed the data leak, Facebook confirmed on Wednesday that information from 87 million users may have been compromised by the political consultancy Cambridge Analytica.

The data breach was initially reported to be 50 million. According to Reuters, Facebook acknowledged it was 87 million users, which is an increase of 37 million user accounts whose data was utilized by the data firm.

On March 14, the world’s largest social network had suspended Cambridge Analytica from its platform. In addition, the data had been initially used by a psychology professor for a personality quiz app. That data designed for research purposes was later passed on to the data firm.

In the news release above, Facebook confirmed they are taking the necessary steps to restrict the data to just third-party app developers. The social and tech giant has been facing mounting scrutiny from regulators in the U.S and in the U.K. An investigation by British lawmakers has begun.

The news of the data breach has not just prompted lawmakers to look into the company’s handling of data. It has also affected the company’s financials. As reported by the New York Times, stock prices have plummeted and Facebook has lost $100 billion in market capitalization.

Almost a month earlier, the company did publicly admit there was unauthorized access to millions of accounts of Facebook users. Furthermore, the data firm based in the UK had access to user information.

With lawmakers raising concerns about the data breach, Facebook’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, will testify soon. In a report, Zuckerberg has agreed to testify before a House Panel on April 11 to discuss the issue of the data scandal.

The interrogation will be headed by Rep. Greg Walden, who is the chair of the committee. Assisting Walden will be ranking member Frank Pallone Jr. who will be facilitating more insight for Americans to understand what exactly happened with the information obtained from Facebook users.

Facebook shares were down 1.4 percent and stock prices ended at $153.90. The hearing is bound to reveal more insight about how the information from 87 million users was used. </s> San Francisco: Facebook Inc. had a software bug for 10 days in May that set the audience for people’s posts to “public,” even if they had intended to share them just with friends, or a smaller audience.

The bug affected as many as 14 million people, the company said. Facebook will soon start individually informing the people who were affected by the bug.

“We’d like to apologize for this mistake,” Erin Egan, Facebook’s chief privacy officer, said in a statement. Facebook has fixed the privacy settings for posts during that time, and will let users review any affected content to make sure the audience is what they wanted, she said.

It’s the latest in a series of revelations about Facebook’s privacy lapses. The company is currently facing criticism from Congress for data partnerships with Chinese companies. Facebook is also still dealing with fallout from a March revelation that Cambridge Analytica, a political consulting firm, was able to obtain information on as many as 87 million people without their consent. </s> Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption How the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica data scandal unfolded

Facebook believes the data of up to 87 million people was improperly shared with the political consultancy Cambridge Analytica - many more than previously disclosed.

The BBC has been told that about 1.1 million of them are UK-based.

The overall figure had been previously quoted as being 50 million by the whistleblower Christopher Wylie.

Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg said "clearly we should have done more, and we will going forward".

During a press conference he said that he had previously assumed that if Facebook gave people tools, it was largely their responsibility to decide how to use them.

But he added that it was "wrong in retrospect" to have had such a limited view.

Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Mark Zuckerberg answered questions from the press for nearly an hour

"Today, given what we know... I think we understand that we need to take a broader view of our responsibility," he said.

"That we're not just building tools, but that we need to take full responsibility for the outcomes of how people use those tools as well."

Mr Zuckerberg also announced an internal audit had uncovered a fresh problem. Malicious actors had been abusing a feature that let users search for one another by typing in email addresses or phone numbers into Facebook's search box.

As a result, many people's public profile information had been "scraped" and matched to the contact details, which had been obtained from elsewhere.

Facebook has now blocked the facility.

"It is reasonable to expect that if you had that [default] setting turned on, that in the last several years someone has probably accessed your public information in this way," Mr Zuckerberg said.

New numbers

The estimates of how many people's data had been exposed were revealed in a blog by the tech firm's chief technology officer, Mike Schroepfer.

The BBC has also learned that Facebook now estimates that about 305,000 people had installed the This Is Your Digital Life quiz that had made the data-harvesting possible. The previously suggested figure had been 270,000.

About 97% of the installations occurred within the US. However, just over 16 million of the total number of users affected are thought to be from other countries.

A spokeswoman for the UK's Information Commissioner's Office told the BBC that it was continuing to assess and consider the evidence before deciding what steps to take.

What is the controversy about?

Facebook has faced intense criticism after it emerged that it had known for years that Cambridge Analytica had collected data from millions of its users, but had relied on the London-based firm to self-certify that it had deleted the information.

Cambridge Analytica said it had bought the information from the creator of the This Is Your Digital Life app without knowing that it had been obtained improperly.

The firm says it deleted all the data as soon as it was made aware of the circumstances.

But Channel 4 News has since reported that at least some of the data in question is still in circulation despite Cambridge Analytica insisting it had destroyed the material.

During Mr Zuckerberg's press conference, Cambridge Analytica tweeted it had only obtained data for 30 million individuals - not 87 million - from the app's creator, and again insisted it had deleted all records.

The latest revelations came several hours after the US House Commerce Committee announced that Facebook's founder, Mark Zuckerberg, would testify before it on 11 April.

Facebook's share price has dropped sharply in the weeks since the allegations emerged.

Wide-ranging changes

In his Wednesday blog post, Mr Schroepfer detailed new steps being taken by Facebook in the wake of the scandal.

They include:

a decision to stop third-party apps seeing who is on the guest lists of Events pages and the contents of messages posted on them

a commitment to only hold call and text history logs collected by the Android versions of Messenger and Facebook Lite for a year. In addition, Facebook said the logs would no longer include the time of the calls

a link will appear at the top of users' News Feeds next week, prompting them to review the third-party apps they use on Facebook and what information is shared as a consequence

Image copyright Facebook Image caption An alert will remind users they can remove any apps they no longer want to access their data

Facebook has also published proposed new versions of its terms of service and data use policy.

The documents are longer than the existing editions in order to make the language clearer and more descriptive.

Tinder users affected

Another change the company announced involved limiting the type of information that can be accessed by third-party applications.

Immediately after the changes were announced, however, users of the widely popular dating app Tinder were hit by login errors, leaving them unable to use the service.

Tinder relies on Facebook to manage its logins. Users reported that they had been signed out of the app and were unable to log in again.

Instead, the app repeatedly asks for more permissions to access a user's Facebook profile information. Many were quick to link the outage to the changes announced by Facebook.

Fake news

The Cambridge Analytica scandal follows earlier controversies about "fake news" and evidence that Russia tried to influence US voters via Facebook.

Mr Zuckerberg has declined to answer questions from British MPs.

Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Mr Zuckerberg now regrets saying it was a "pretty crazy idea" that fake news on Facebook could have helped Donald Trump become president

When asked about this by the BBC, he said he had decided that his chief technology officer and chief product officer should answer questions from countries other than the US.

He added, however, that he had made a mistake in 2016 by dismissing the notion that fake news had influenced the US Presidential election.

"People will analyse the actual impact of this for a long time to come," he added.

"But what I think is clear at this point is that it was too flippant and I should never have referred to it as crazy." </s> WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - Facebook, the world's largest social network, reached the milestone of 2 billion monthly users.



The number of users increased from the 1.94 billion that the company reported in its earnings report in May.



'As of this morning, the Facebook community is now officially 2 billion people! We're making progress connecting the world, and now let's bring the world closer together. It's an honor to be on this journey with you,' Mark Zuckerberg posted on his Facebook page.



Facebook's other social networking sites are also doing well, with Facebook Messenger currently boasting of 1.2 billion monthly users and WhatsApp also having almost same number of users. In comparison, Twitter has 328 million monthly active users, while Instagram has over 700 million and Snapchat 255 million.



The company reports that about 66 percent of Facebook's monthly users visit the site each day, compared to 55 percent when the company had 1 billion monthly users.



'Each day, more than 175 million people share a Love reaction, and on average, over 800 million people like something on Facebook. More than 1 billion people use Groups every month,' said Guillermo Spiller, Product Manager.



Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX </s> Facebook says it recently discovered a security breach affecting nearly 50 million user accounts.

In a blog post, the company says hackers exploited its “View As” feature, which lets people see what their profiles look like to someone else.

Facebook says it has taken steps to fix the security problem and alerted law enforcement.

To deal with the issue, Facebook reset some logins, so 90 million people have been logged out and will have to log in again.

That includes anyone who has been subject to a “View As” lookup in the past year.

Facebook says it doesn’t know who’s behind the attacks or where they’re based.

The hack is the latest security headache for Facebook, which has been dealing with political disinformation campaigns from Russia and elsewhere since 2016. </s> Facebook has said that an attack on its network has affected almost 50 million user accounts, exposing their personal information. The breach could allow attackers to take over the accounts of affected users. The full extent of the attack remains unknown at this time.

The social media giant said that the security breach was discovered earlier this week on Tuesday. The company found that the attackers had exploited a feature in Facebook’s code that impacted ‘View As’, which lets people see what their own profile looks like to others. The attackers exploited the vulnerability, which leaked Facebook access token, giving attackers access to users’ accounts.

In a conference call with reports, Mark Zukerberg, CEO of Facebook, said, “We’re taking it really seriously. We have a major security effort at the company that hardens all of our surfaces. I’m glad we found this. But it definitely is an issue that this happened in the first place.”

Currently the company’s internal investigation “is still in its early stages” and it has provided no details regarding who might be behind the attack or what user data (if any) was exfiltrated. Facebook has not revealed where in the world the affected 50 million users are, but says that it has informed Irish data regulators, where Facebook’s European subsidiary is based.

Over 90 million users were forced to log out of their accounts on Friday, which is a common security measure when accounts have been compromised. However, the users were not required to change their passwords.

The company said that it has fixed the vulnerability and has also notified law enforcement officials. It has temporarily disabled the View As feature while the company conducts a thorough security review. Facebook says that peoples’ privacy and security are very important and apologises for the incident.

Read More: WhatsApp co-founder Brian Acton feels he sold users’ privacy with Facebook acquisition

The news about security breach comes at a time when Facebook is going through a rough time. It is currently facing federal investigation over its role in the Cambridge Analytica scandal in which the firm misused data from about 87 million Facebook users. </s> SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Facebook Inc (FB.O) said on Tuesday that 2 billion people are regularly using its flagship service, marching past another milestone in its growth from a college curiosity in the United States to the world’s largest social media network.

3D-printed models of people are seen in front of a Facebook logo in this photo illustration taken June 9, 2016. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration

Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg disclosed the number to his followers in a Facebook post. "It's an honor to be on this journey with you," he wrote. (bit.ly/2sefWFL)

The user base is bigger than the population of any single country, and of six of the seven continents. It represents more than a quarter of the world’s 7.5 billion people.

Facebook defines a monthly active user as a registered Facebook user who logged in and visited Facebook through its website or a mobile device, or used its Messenger app, in the past 30 days. It does not include people who use the Instagram or WhatsApp networks but not Facebook.

The company said in May that duplicate accounts, according to an estimate from last year, may have represented some 6 percent of its worldwide user base.

The social network’s user population dwarfs that of similar companies. Twitter Inc (TWTR.N) reported in April monthly active users of 328 million, while Snap Inc’s (SNAP.N) Snapchat had 166 million daily users at the end of the first quarter.

WeChat, a unit of Tencent Holdings Ltd (0700.HK) and a widely used service in China, said in May that it had 938 million monthly active users in the first quarter.

Facebook had 1.94 billion people using its service monthly as of March 31, an increase of 17 percent from a year earlier. It reached 1 billion in October 2012.

The company, which Zuckerberg started in 2004 in his college dorm room, uses its huge size advantage to lure advertisers, offering them highly targeted marketing capabilities based on its data about users.

The number of advertisers topped 5 million in April, the company said.

Facebook’s growth has increasingly come from outside the United States, Canada and Europe. Three years ago, those regions accounted for some 38 percent of users, compared with about 30 percent in the first quarter of this year.

To increase penetration rates in developing nations, Facebook has rolled out pared-down versions of its apps that use less data, and it has been developing solar-powered drones to extend internet connectivity around the planet.
Facebook increases its estimate of the number of affected users to 87 million.