Facebook Will Notify Those Affected by Data Breach

On Monday, users affected by the site's scandal with Cambridge Analytica will receive a detailed message on their feeds.

April 9, 2018

This is a picture of Facebook. — Photo Illustration by Chesnot/Getty Images
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Have you been wondering whether your personal information was compromised in Facebook's data breach with Cambridge Analytica?

You won't be curious for much longer. You'll find out this week if your account was affected.

Deadline reports users involved with the breach will receive a detailed message on their news feeds on Monday. Additionally, all of the platform's users will receive a notification to a link to control what third-party apps they share their personal information with. This link will help users shut off information sharing to these apps or shut down information sharing to all additional apps completely.

You don't have to wait until tomorrow to crack down on third-party data sharing since this link is already accessible in your account settings. Once you've clicked the "Settings" tab, go to "Apps and Websites" to view which apps you have permitted to access your information. (Seriously, do it: I realized 150 different apps were using my information, many of which I downloaded years ago, as I wrote this article.)

On this same page, you can turn off the ability to interact with other websites using your Facebook data, preventing you from logging in with Facebook user credentials.

As many as 87 million people will be alerted, which is 37 million more people affected than Facebook originally announced. Additionally, the social networking platform has been forced to adapt to new European Union privacy laws but hasn't commented on whether the same protections will apply to North American users.