Personal data from more than 6,000 Maltese Facebook users was shared with analytics firm Cambridge Analytica, it has emerged, after the European Commission revealed 2.7 million EU citizens may have fallen victim to the scandal.
More Maltese citizens were targetted than Estonia, Latvia and Luxembourg, countries with higher population numbers. No further details are available.
Figures show the Maltese are among the highest users of social media in the EU, especially Facebook.
The European Union said on Friday Facebook has admitted 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.
EU spokesman Christian Wigand said justice commissioner Vera Jourova will have a telephone call with Facebook chief executive 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 US company must adapt to new EU data protection rules.
Mr Wigand said EU data protection authorities will discuss over the coming days "a strong co-ordinated approach" on how to deal with the Facebook investigation.
A Facebook spokeswoman said that Cambridge Analytica collected data from 1,079,031 in the UK and a total of 309,815 users in Germany.
Users of the social media platform were affected in all 28 EU member states.
In Italy, 214,134 users were affected, and in France, 211,667. A total of 136,985 users in Spain had their data scooped up, and 112,421 in Romania.
In the Netherlands, 89,373 users were affected, and 63,080 in Portugal. 60,957 Belgians’ profiles were harvested, and 59,480 in Greece. In Poland, 57,138 users were affected; in Sweden, 55,337; in Ireland, 44,702; in Denmark, 41,820; in Bulgaria, 35,718; in Austria, 33,568; in Hungary, 32,067; in the Czech Republic, 29,376, in Croatia, 21,517; in Finland, 19,693, in Lithuania, 15,123; in Slovakia, 14,846, in Slovenia, 11,255; in Cyprus, 7,455; in Malta, 6,011; in Estonia, 5,510; in Latvia, 4,757, and in Luxembourg, 2,645.