Facebook's chief technology officer, Mike Schroepfer, now confirmed that Cambridge Analytica had access to data of 87 million users – mainly from the United States.
Previous reports had estimated that the number of affected accounts was about 50 million, whose data is rumored to have leaked to the analytics firm – but as everything shows, the size of the breach is far larger.
Previously, when Facebook announced the number of accounts exposed to Russian propaganda aimed at manipulating the outcome of the 2016 US election, it had left Instagram out of its calculations and so had to later update this data, adding those originating from that social network.
In a post that was released on Wednesday, Schroepfer said that Facebook is also going to inform the victims of the breach, whose data may have «leaked improperly to Cambridge Analytica».
The post also talks about several changes that Facebook will introduce in order to limit developers' access to user data. The company will individually approve each app that tries to gain access to information related to check-ins, hobbies, photos, posts, videos, events and groups.
From April 9 onward, Facebook will add a link above users' News Feeds so it can check which apps they use and the nature of the data they share with those apps. It can also choose to remove apps it no longer wishes to use.
In other related news, Facebook has also confirmed that it monitors all messages and photos you send via Messenger. The company said it does this to filter messages that contain sensitive data or inappropriate content.
