Facebook data breach row: Data may be stored in Russia says Christopher Wylie

Cambridge Analytica whistleblower told American media on Sunday that the data gathered from Facebook by UK based data mining firm could be stored in Russia.

While speaking to an American channel on a show, Christopher Wylie also said that a "lot of people" have access to the data.

Wylie reportedly said, "it could be stored in various parts of the world including Russia, given the fact that the professor who was was managing the data harvesting process was going back and forth between the UK to Russia".

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Wylie during the interview also said that the user data obtained from 87 million users the number could be higher than what Facebook has claimed.

He further informed that he was contacted by authorities of US including the department of justice. He ensured his cooperation with them.

On the question of whether it could be known that how many people have access to this data, Wylie said that the data could have been copied several times after it left Facebook's database.

"I know that Facebook is now starting to take steps to rectify that and start to find out who had access to it and where it could have gone, but ultimately it's not watertight to say that we can ensure that all the data is gone forever," CNN quoted him as saying.

Cambridge Analytica came under fire along with social media platform Facebook after the reports that it gathered personal information of Facebook users with illegal measures.

He was referring to the Cambridge University professor Aleksander Kogan who is a Russian data scientist gathered data through apps and sold it to the company who used to it in assisting Donald Trump in 2016 presidential election.

Before Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg revealed that the personal data of up to 87 million users was improperly shared with Cambridge Analytica news reports had stated that 50 million users were affected due to the breach.

The data breach was mostly in the United States.

Meanwhile, the company has denied the allegations of obtaining data through illegal ways and said that it acted in appropriate ways.