Mark Zuckerberg admits his own personal Facebook data was harvested in data abuse scandal

Mark Zuckerberg's own personal data was taken as part of Facebook's data abuse scandal, he has said.

He made the confession during Congress hearings, where US lawmakers quizzed the Facebook boss on how it was responding to claims it had unethically abused data about its users.

The admission means that organisations may have access to data about Mr Zuckerberg that wouldn't usually be available to the public. Developers were able to access information like a users' friends and other personal information – a decision that has been criticised, and which Facebook has taken efforts to now stop.

Mr Zuckerberg didn't say exactly what third-party app had stolen his data. But the questioning came as part of a discussion about Cambridge Analytica, the political data company that has been accused of scraping data and using it for campaigning.

Representative Anna Eshoo, reading questions from her constituents in and around Silicon Valley, California, asked Mr Zuckerberg whether he was one of the 87 million people whose data was handed to Cambridge Analytica.

"Yes," Mr Zuckerberg replied.

He gave little more information about what had been taken and how.

Facebook allows anyone to check if they were part of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, by heading to a special page. But other apps are thought to have used similar tricks, and Cambridge Analytica itself has said that it did not think what it did was particularly special.