Facebook users in the E.U. were reportedly not affected at all in the ongoing Cambridge Analytica scandal. That’s according to Privacy Policy Director at Facebook Stephen Satterfield, responding to questioning by European Union lawmakers today. Satterfield revealed in his statements that no European data was shared with Cambridge Analytica. However, that’s based solely on current information about a contract between the firm and Dr. Aleksandr Kogan, who was behind the efforts to feed information to the group. Facebook says that the contract specifies that data was to be collected from Americans, specifically for use in U.S. political campaigns. Previous statements from the world’s biggest social media company had indicated that as many as 2.7 million Europeans could have been affected. According to the new statements, the company released those figures as a preliminary precaution and that the data was not likely shared due to the overarching goal of the data collection.
The social media giant is still waiting for approval to perform its own full audit of the breach since the matter is currently under investigation by several world government offices. In the meantime, lawmakers and regulators aren’t entirely convinced about the conclusion the company has reached. Instead, they question why there is a contradiction, to begin with, and whether or not there’s reasonable cause to reach that conclusion without a full investigation having already been conducted. So it may be a good idea to take the news with a grain of salt for the time being. With that said, reports from earlier this month have suggested that Californians may have been hit the hardest by the breach, as well as several other key voting states within the U.S. That would seem to align with Facebook’s most recent statements.
The scandal first erupted following the discovery that Cambridge Analytica had been receiving data collected from Facebook users without permission. The firm purchased data collected via Facebook applications from approximately 87 million users, according to recent figures. That has since resulted in numerous investigations from the E.U., U.S., and other organizations as well as the effective shutdown of Cambridge Analytica. Given the size of the breach and its international nature investigations are ongoing and it’s impossible to say when a full conclusion might be reached.