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How to tell if your Facebook information was shared with Cambridge Analytica

Posted at 10:20 AM, Apr 10, 2018
and last updated 2018-04-10 13:00:28-04

Facebook has begun alerting some users that their data was swept up in the Cambridge Analytica privacy scandal.

To tell if you're been affected, you can click here, or go to the Facebook Help Center here and type in, "How can I tell if my info was shared with Cambridge Analytica?"

You will then get a notification that will let you know if your information was shared. It will tell you either, "Based on our available records, neither you nor your friends logged into 'This Is Your Digital Life.' As a result, it doesn't appear your Facebook information was shared with Cambridge Analytica by 'This Is Your Digital Life," or "Based on our investigation, you don't appear to have logged into "This Is Your Digital Life" with Facebook before we removed it from our platform in 2015. However, a friend of yours did log in. As a result, the following information was likely shared with "This Is Your Digital Life.'"

A notification that appeared on Facebook for some users Tuesday told them that "one of your friends" used Facebook to log into a now-banned personality quiz app called "This Is Your Digital Life." The notice says the app misused the information, including public profile, page likes, birthday and current city, by sharing it with the data-mining firm Cambridge Analytica.

As many as 87 million users who might have had their data shared were supposed to get a detailed message on their news feeds starting Monday. Facebook says more than 70 million of the affected users are in the U.S., though there are over a million each in the Philippines, Indonesia and the U.K.