Facebook begins notifying millions of users about data theft: Report

Social media giant Facebook said in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica (CA) data leak scandal that it would begin notifying its users whether their data were compromised with.

And it finally started on Monday. Facebook is displaying a link at the top of the news feed since Monday asking its users to remove apps they no longer required, the Verge said. According to it, a Facebook spokesperson said the notification started to roll out on Monday. The social media giant has shared a "how you're affected" link to clarify whether one's personal data were breached.

The Verge also reported that Facebook was now bringing in some big changes to prevent another CA-like scandal from affecting its business and goodwill. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has said that users running political ads will have to get themselves verified as a preventive step. Zuckerberg is set to testify before the US Congress on how his company treats the matter of protecting the users' data.

Eighty-seven million users were said to be affected by the CA data theft and they were supposed to get a detailed message on their news feed starting Monday.

Recently, Steve Wozniak, co-founder of tech giant Apple decided to quit Facebook for he felt the latter did not treat its users' privacy with enough care, unlike what he said was the case with Apple. Apple CEO Tim Cook also took a sharp dig at Zuckerberg in an interview last month saying he himself would have never been in the latter's place for he believes against the existence of detailed online profiles people. The Facebook CEO shot back saying Cook's criticism was "extremely glib".

Facebook is in a full firefighting mode after the CA episode raised a serious question over its reliability in protecting the users' privacy. An apologetic Zuckerberg said that he committed a "huge mistake" by failing to take a broad view of the social media giant's responsibility globally.

On the number of users actually getting affected by the data theft, CA whistleblower Christopher Wylie said the number could be far bigger than 87 million.