271,000 Nigerians were affected by the Cambridge Analytica data breach

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April 9, 2018
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2 min read
Telcos in nigeria

In the wake of the Facebook data breach, Cambridge Analytica's research director, Christopher Wylie reportedly said the number of Facebook users whose data was breached “absolutely” could be more than 87 million.

According to the report, this admission by Christopher who is the whistleblower, keeps taking this data breach to new scary heights everyday.

Considering the related political drama in Nigeria, the affair begs the question of how many Nigerian Facebook accounts from these millions were affected.

As at February 2016, the last official number showed there were 16 million monthly active users (MAUs) from Nigeria on Facebook, considering that this number was 1 million more than 5 months earlier at the time of counting, it is expected to have increased considerably over a 2-year period.

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Suggested read: More than 16 million Nigerians use Facebook every month


So how many of these people need to be afraid of Cambridge Analytica?

According to an official statement Facebook sent to Techpoint, 78 users in Nigeria installed Cambridge Analytica's 'This Is Your Digital Life' quiz app and generally, 271,469 profiles were affected. This last number were those whose friends have installed the app elsewhere in the world.

This disclosure is probably in line with a report that starting today, Facebook will show users if their profiles had been shared with Cambridge Analytica and how they to remove other applications like it. It will do this by showing a "protecting your information" on top each user's news feed and subsequently direct them to a section to see apps and websites they have used Facebook to log into, and remove any they no longer want.

Sometime last year, quizzes exploded on 'Nigerian Facebook' and most were probably styled data harvesters, and plenty of them still exist.

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Suggested read: Stop taking ‘quizzes on Facebook’ or your account could be hacked


But Facebook users may not need to worry much as the social media platform is breaking its back in the face of the current scandal to better protect the information of users.

tech. media. startups. africa. vc | Twitter: @victor_ekwealor
tech. media. startups. africa. vc | Twitter: @victor_ekwealor
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tech. media. startups. africa. vc | Twitter: @victor_ekwealor

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