Craig Timberg, Tony Romm and Elizabeth Dwoskin of The Washington Post report:
Facebook said Wednesday that “malicious actors” took advantage of search tools on its platform, making it possible for them to discover the identities and collect information on most of its 2 billion users worldwide.
The revelation came amid rising acknowledgment by Facebook about its struggles to control the data it gathers on users. Among the announcements Wednesday was that Cambridge Analytica, a political consultancy hired by then-presidential candidate Donald Trump and other Republicans, had improperly gathered detailed Facebook information on 87 million people, of whom 71 million were Americans.
But the abuse of Facebook’s search tools — now disabled — happened far more broadly and over the course of several years, with few Facebook users likely escaping the scam, company officials acknowledged.
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