Here’s how you can find out if you were impacted by Facebook data breach

It all begins on Monday.

If you have a Facebook account, have been following the news over the last few weeks or  have simply had a glance at any social media lately, chance are you've heard of Cambridge Analytica and their data breach. Last month, a former employee of the UK consulting firm, Cambridge Analytics, accused the company of taking personal information from 270,000 Facebook users through a personality quiz - as well as the data of their friends. They reportedly used this information to profile voters in a number of high-profile campaigns - like the US Presidential Election and Brexit - and targeted them with personalised political ads on the social media platform. A total of around 87 million people are said to have been affected by the data breach - and now Facebook have revealed how you will be able to find out if your data was part of it. Facebook published this week, explaining that beginning on Monday, April 9, there would be a new link at the top of everyone's News Feed. Following the link will let users of the social media platform see what apps they used, as well as what kind of information they have shared with those apps and a way to remove those that they no longer want. The post goes on to state:

"As part of this process we will also tell people if their information may have been improperly shared with Cambridge Analytica."

Up to 87 million people are believed to have been impacted by the Facebook data breach - with most of them in the United States. But it emerged this week that as many as 44,000 people in Ireland could have had their data improperly accessed. A spokesperson said in a statement to Newstalk:

"Our investigation shows that the people impacted were predominantly in the United States – 97.1% of users who installed the app are understood to have been primarily in the US, while 81.2% of total affected people. "However, we do know that 15 people in Ireland installed thisisyourdigitallife, and up to 44,687 people in Ireland may have been friends with someone who installed the app, and, therefore, may have been affected."