A new Gallup Poll released Thursday revealed more Facebook users were concerned about data privacy amid controversy surrounding the tech company’s sharing of personal information with political data firm Cambridge Analytica ahead of the 2016 election.
Forty-three percent of Facebook users reported being concerned about the invasion of privacy, whereas 11 percent of users said they were “not concerned at all.” In 2011, only 30 percent of Facebook users reported being very concerned about the invasion of privacy.
A majority of users also reported being concerned about their information being sold.
The poll comes as the tech company battles controversy surrounding its sharing of information on as many as 87 million users with a political data firm working with the Trump campaign in 2016.
The company’s founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, testified before a joint session of the Senate Judiciary and Commerce committees this week acknowledging Facebook’s mistakes in handling user data and privacy.
“For most of our existence, we focused on all the good that connecting people can do,” Zuckerberg told senators. “It’s clear now that we didn’t do enough to prevent these tools from being used for harm as well.”
The poll was conducted April 2-8 and surveyed 785 Facebook users with a margin of error of 4 percentage points.
