Over 300,000 Australians affected by Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica scandal

It has been revealed that Cambridge Analytica may have gained access to more than 87 million users’ personal data (37 million more than initially reported), and over 300,000 Australians are believed to be among these.

The new figures were revealed in a statement from Facebook’s chief technology officer, Mike Schroepfer, which offers a breakdown of the number of affected users by region. While a good majority of them were from the US, almost 19% of the 87 million (around 6.5 million) users were from other countries.

Despite the seemingly precise figures in the above chart, it’s worth noting that this is a “best estimate” of the number of affected users, as Facebook admits there is no way to know exactly how many people were impacted.

Shortly after the figures were revealed, Mark Zuckerberg admitted during a conference call that they “didn’t take a broad enough view on what our responsibility was and that was a huge mistake. That was my mistake”.

The social media giant has overhauled its privacy settings in response to the scandal, and Mark Zuckerberg will be facing US lawmakers on April 11, but in the meantime, there are measures you can take to ensure your data is safe from misuse.

Here's what you can do:

• Disconnect your Facebook account from third-party apps
• Delete your Facebook account permanently or temporarily