Millions of Europeans affected by Facebook data scandal, EU reveals

Data protection authorities across Europe will work to investigate claims of data abuse

Mark Zuckerberg has apologised for the Cambridge Analytica scandal (PA)

The European Union says that Facebook has told it that up to 2.7 million people in the 28-nation bloc may have been victim of improper data sharing involving political data-mining firm Cambridge Analytica.

Now the EU says that it will ask the data protection authorities in its various countries to work together and investigate the site for the abuse of data.

As the data sharing scandal has spread, estimates of the number of people caught up in it have increased. This week, Facebook said that at least 87 million people across the world had been affected by it.

Many of those people are outside of Europe. A significant number are in developing nations, where the work of Cambridge Analytica partly focused.

EU spokesman Christian Wigand said Friday that EU Justice Commissioner Vera Jourova will have a telephone call with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg early next week to address the massive data leaks.

The EU and Facebook will be looking at what changes the social media giant needs to make to better protect users and how the U.S. company must adapt to new EU data protection rules. 

Wigand said that EU data protection authorities will discuss over the coming days "a strong coordinated approach" on how to deal with the Facebook investigation.

Additional reporting by agencies