If you log into Facebook over the next few days, you’re likely to receive a notification alerting you to the privacy status of your account’s data, following the harvesting of 87 million profiles by Cambridge Analytica via an app called This is Your Digital Life.
Every user whose account could have been harvested by Cambridge Analytica will at some point be provided notifications specific to them at the top of their news feed. Until that happens, you’re able to manually check your account’s status on a new help page on the site. Alternatively, you can search: “How can I tell if my info was shared with Cambridge Analytica?” in the Facebook help centre. Here you will see one of three results.
1. If your account was not harvested, you will see a message that reads:
“Based on our available records, neither you nor your friends logged into ‘This Is Your Digital Life.’ As a result, it doesn’t appear your Facebook information was shared with Cambridge Analytica by ‘This Is Your Digital Life.'”
2. If your account was harvested, you will see a different message reading:
“A friend of yours did log in.”
In this case it is likely that your profile, birthday, current city, page likes, and possibly their news feed were shared with Cambridge Analytica. About one million people in the UK will see the second message, of an estimated 87 million worldwide.
3. The Guardian reports that about 300,000 people – an unknown number of which are in the UK – will receive a message that says they were the ones who installed the app ‘This Is Your Digital Life’.
If you see this message, you were probably responsible for your and your friends’ data being handed over to Cambridge Analytica. If you used the app, this result also means your psychometric test results may have helped inform Cambridge Analytica’s strategy during the US Election Campaign.