65,000 Singaporeans hit by Facebook data breach

As a response, it has changed data permissions and data sharing practices.

The total number of people in Singapore whose Facebook information may have been improperly shared with political consultancy firm Cambridge Analytica hit 65,009, a company spokesperson told Singapore Business Review.

The social network was under massive pressure after reports that users’ data were compromised after interacting with an app in the platform and sent over to Cambridge Analytica. The company witnessed its shares go down for days after the news broke out.

According to data, the majority of people affected by the breach were in the United States, comprising of 70.6 million of users or 81.6% of the total. There were also over 1 million people affected in each of the Philippines, Indonesia, and the UK.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a press call, “It’s clear now that we didn’t do enough. We didn’t focus enough on preventing abuse and thinking through how people could use these tools to do harm as well.”

As a response, Facebook made some changes to the social network. Firstly, apps using the Events API will no longer be able to access the guest list or posts on the event wall. And in the future, “only apps we approve that agree to strict requirements will be allowed to use the Events API,” said Facebook chief technology officer Mike Schroepfer.

Facebook also banned apps from accessing the member list of a group. It also required all third-party apps using the Groups API to get its an admin’s approval to ensure they benefit the group. “We’re also removing personal information, such as names and profile photos, attached to posts or comments that approved apps can access,” Schroepfer said.

Previously, any app could use the Pages API to read posts or comments from any Page. Now, future access to the Pages API will need to be approved.

Facebook will also need to approve all apps that request access to information such as check-ins, likes, photos, posts, videos, events and groups. “We started approving these permissions in 2014, but now we’re tightening our review process — requiring these apps to agree to strict requirements before they can access this data. We will also no longer allow apps to ask for access to personal information such as religious or political views, relationship status and details, custom friends lists, education and work history, fitness activity, book reading activity, music listening activity, news reading, video watch activity, and games activity,” Schroepfer added.

In the next week, they will also remove a developer’s ability to request data people shared with them if it appears they have not used the app in the last three months.

Facebook also limited the shareable information for calls and texts and banned third-party data providers to directly target audiences. It will also emphasize app controls to user starting April 9.