87 million user data 'improperly shared' with Cambridge Analytica: Facebook

As Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg gets ready to testify before the US House committee, the social media giant revealed the personal data of up to 87 million users was "improperly shared" with British political consultancy Cambridge Analytica.

New reports in the past fortnight had said 50 million users were affected due to the breach by Cambridge Analytica which is linked to President Trump's 2016 presidential campaign. The data breach was mostly in the US, the company said.

"I'm quite confident it will not be more than 87 million, it could well be less," Zuckerberg said, while saying, "When you're building something like Facebook which is unprecedented in the world, there are things that you're going to mess up."

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Meanwhile, with fingers pointed over his leadership of the social network behemoth with 2 billion users, Zuckerberg said he accepted responsibility for the failure to protect user data but asserted that he is still the best person to lead the network.

"I think life is about learning from the mistakes and figuring out how to move forward," he said.

Zuckerberg said had not fired anyone over the scandal and did not plan to. "I'm not looking to throw anyone else under the bus for mistakes that we made here," he said.

Zuckerberg who has been under pressure from all quarters will now appear before the  House of Representatives' Energy and Commerce Committee on April 11th to speak about the causes of the data leak.

"It will be an important opportunity to shed light on critical consumer data privacy issues and help all Americans better understand what happens to their personal information online," committee chairmen Greg Walden and  Frank Pallone in a statement.