NEW YORK – The U.S. government is officially investigating Facebook, and chief law enforcement officers for North Carolina (Josh Stein) and 36 other U.S. states and territories, are demanding answers from Facebook about user data.

The Federal Trade Commission confirmed in a statement Monday that it is currently investigating Facebook data practices as the company faces new scrutiny from the Cambridge Analytica scandal.

“The FTC takes very seriously recent press reports raising substantial concerns about the privacy practices of Facebook,” said Tom Pahl, acting director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection. “Today, the FTC is confirming that it has an open non-public investigation into these practices.”

News broke earlier this month that Cambridge Analytica, a data firm with ties to President Donald Trump’s campaign, reportedly accessed information from about 50 million Facebook users without their knowledge.

CNN reported last week that the FTC was sending a letter to Facebook with questions about how the social media company allowed the data to wind up in the hands of Trump campaign consultants.

Facebook stock was down 4% in early trading Monday.

Reps for Facebook did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

States eye Facebook, too

The chief law enforcement officers for North Carolina and 36 other U.S. states and territories are demanding to know when Facebook learned of a huge breach of privacy protections.

The officers say in a letter Monday to CEO Mark Zuckerberg that users’ trust in the social media platform is “broken.”

“As the chief law enforcement officers of our respective states, we place a priority on protecting user privacy, which has been repeatedly placed at risk because of businesses’ failure to properly ensure those protections,” they wrote.

“Most recently, we have learned from news reports that the business practices within the social media world have evolved to give multiple software developers access to personal information of Facebook users. These reports raise serious questions regarding consumer privacy.”

The full text of the letter is available online.

The attorneys general are asking how Facebook monitored what these developers did with all the data they collected and whether Facebook had safeguards to prevent misuse.

They also asked Zuckerberg for an update on how Facebook will allow users to more easily control the privacy of their accounts.

Cambridge Analytica, a political data-mining firm, is accused of lifting data from some 50 million Facebook users to influence voters in the 2016 elections.

Congressional testimony

The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee says he’s invited Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to testify at a hearing next month on data privacy.

Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa says the April 10 hearing will cover how consumer data is collected, retained and distributed for commercial use. He says the hearing also will examine what steps companies like Facebook can do to better protect personal information.

Grassley’s committee is the third congressional panel to seek Zuckerberg’s testimony in the wake of a privacy scandal involving Cambridge Analytica, a Trump-connected data-mining company.

Several Judiciary Committee members had pressed Grassley to hold the hearing.

Grassley says he’s also invited Google CEO Sundar Pichai and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey.