Social media giant Facebook has told the Indian Government that it should not be held responsible for any misuse of user data as Cambridge Analytica and Global Science Research Limited had accessed the data without authorisation.

According to sources close to Facebook, the communication has been sent to the Government on Thursday. “Cambridge Analytica and GSR (Global Science Research Limited) are not downstream entities or affiliates of Facebook. Both GSR and Cambridge Analytica made independent decisions regarding the data they obtained via the Aap, which Facebook did not authorise and which breached our policies,” Facebook said in its response to the Centre's show cause notice.

Facebook had been asked in the notice, whether the company or its related or downstream agencies utilising its data have previously been engaged by any entities to manipulate the Indian electoral process.

Facebook's spokesperson said, “Protecting people’s information is at the heart of everything we do, and we require the same from people who operate apps on Facebook. Cambridge Analytica’s acquisition of Facebook data through the app developed by Dr. Aleksandr Kogan and his company Global Science Research Limited happened without our authorisation and was an explicit violation of our platform policies. At no time did Facebook agree to Cambridge Analytica’s use of any Facebook user data that may have been collected by this app, including with respect to users located in India.”

“We are investigating the specific number of people whose information was accessed by the app, including those in India. The numbers that we have now are that only 335 people in India installed the app, which is 0.1% of the app's total worldwide installs. We further understand that 562,120 additional people in India were potentially affected, as friends of people who installed the app. This yields a total of 562,455 potentially affected people in India, which is 0.6% of the global number of potentially affected people,” the spokesperson added.

On April 9, Facebook will show users a link at the top of their News Feed so they can see what apps they use and the information they have shared with those apps. “At this time, we will also tell people if their information may have been improperly shared with Cambridge Analytica,” Facebook said.

These figures do not include people who may have installed the app, or people who may have been friends with people who installed the app, but then subsequently deleted their Facebook account. They include any and all friendships that existed at any time between when the app first became active on the Facebook platform in November 2013 and when the app’s access to friends’ data was limited in May 2015. They also include users who may have changed their settings to disallow sharing of their data with the app, due to limited historical information about when or how those settings were updated.

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