Mark Zuckerberg has refused the UK parliament’s request to be questioned by MPs over data abuse.

The Facebook boss will send one of his senior deputies instead, the company said. Damian Collins, who leads the digital, culture, media and sport select committee, had written to Mr Zuckerberg directly requesting that he appear.

Mr Collins’s letter made the request in the strongest possible terms, and suggested that Mr Zuckerberg himself should appear. He gave until Monday evening to reply to the request.

Mark Zuckerberg on Cambridge Analytica: 'I'm really sorry'

How to stop Facebook from revealing everything about you Show all 9 1 / 9 How to stop Facebook from revealing everything about you How to stop Facebook from revealing everything about you Lock your profile down If you haven’t done this already, do it now. In Settings, hit the Privacy tab. From here, you can control who gets to see your future posts and friends list. Choose from Public, Friends, Only Me and Custom in the dropdown menu. How to stop Facebook from revealing everything about you Limit old posts Annoyingly, changing this has no effect on who’s able to see your past Facebook posts. Instead, on the Privacy page, you have to click on Limit Past Posts, then select Limit Old Posts and finally hit Confirm on the pop-up. How to stop Facebook from revealing everything about you Make yourself harder to find You can stop completely random people from adding you by selecting Friends of Friends from the dropdown menu in the Who can send you friend requests? section of the Privacy page. It’s also worth limiting who can find your Facebook profile with your number and email address. At the bottom of the page is the option to prevent search engines outside of Facebook from linking to your profile. How to stop Facebook from revealing everything about you Control access to your Timeline You can limit who gets to post things on your Timeline and who gets to see posts on your Timeline too. In Settings, go to Timeline and Tagging and edit the sections you want to lock down. How to stop Facebook from revealing everything about you Block people When you block someone, they won’t be able to see things you post on your Timeline, tag you, invite you to events or groups, start conversations with you or add you as a friend. To do it, go to Settings and Blocking. Annoyingly, you have to block people on Messenger separately. You can also add friends to your Restricted list here, which means they’ll still be friends with you but will only be able to see your public posts and things you share on a mutual friend's Timeline. How to stop Facebook from revealing everything about you Review tags One of Facebook’s handiest privacy features is the ability to review posts you’re tagged in before they appear on your Timeline. They’ll still be visible on the News Feed while they’re fresh, but won’t be tied to your profile forever. In Timeline and Tagging, enable Timeline review controls. How to stop Facebook from revealing everything about you Clean up your apps You can view a list of all of the apps you’ve connected to your Facebook account by going to Settings and Apps. The list might be longer than you expected it to be. It’s worth tidying this up to ensure things you no longer use lose access to your personal information. If you don’t want to log into websites and apps with your facebook account, scroll down and turn Platform off. How to stop Facebook from revealing everything about you Change your ad preferences You can view a list of everything Facebook thinks you’re into and tinker with your ad preferences by going to Settings and Adverts. A lot more information is displayed on the desktop site than the app, so we’d recommend doing this on a computer. How to stop Facebook from revealing everything about you Download your data Facebook lets you download all of the data it has on you, including the posts you’ve shared, your messages and photos, ads you’ve clicked on and even the IP addresses that are logged when you log in or out of the site. It’s a hell of a lot of information, which you should download to ensure you never over-share on the social network again.

Facebook has now replied, on a letter dated 26 March, in which it says that it will send either Mike Schroepfer, Facebook’s chief technology officer, or Chris Cox, its chief product officer.

Both have worked under Mark Zuckerberg for more than 10 years, and are among the longest serving executives at the company. It did not say why the Facebook boss himself could not appear.

Mr Zuckerberg has been repeatedly criticised for his failure to speak publicly about the allegations of data abuse made in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal.

He didn’t address the controversy at all for a number of days, and eventually did so with a statement on his site that itself drew criticism from users.

Facebook data row: What is Cambridge Analytica?

The reply letter to Damian Collins came from Rebecca Stimson, Facebook’s head of public policy in the UK. It said that Facebook took the request from parliament seriously.

“Facebook fully recognises the level of public and parliamentary interest in these issues, and supports your belief that these issues must be addressed at the most senior levels of the company by those in an authoritative position to answer your questions,” it read.

“As such Mr Zuckerberg has personally asked one of his deputies to make themselves available to give evidence to the Committee.”

The letter also claimed that only 1 per cent of downloads of thisisyourdigitallife – the app that Cambridge Analytica used to harvest data about users without their knowledge – had come from the UK.

Loading....

Damian Collins said that the DCMS committee will be “very happy to hear from Mr Cox to give evidence”, but that he still wanted to speak to Zuckerberg.

He said that it wasn’t clear from the letter “whether he is available as well”, and suggested that parliament would consider setting up a “video link if that is more convenient for him”.

Mr Collins also suggested that it still expected Mr Zuckerberg to come if he couldn’t convincingly say why he shouldn’t.

“He stated in interviews that if he is the right person to appear, he will appear,” he said. ”We think he is the right person and look forward to hearing from him.”

Mr Collins’s original letter, sent last week, accused Facebook of having “consistently understated” the risks of abuse of data by the company, and that they had been “misleading to the Committee”.

“It is now time to hear from a senior Facebook executive with the sufficient authority to give an accurate account of this catastrophic failure of process,” he said.