Lawyers have lodged a mass complaint to Australian privacy authorities on behalf of Facebook users caught up in the Cambridge Analytica scandal.

Class action funders IMF Bentham announced the case on Tuesday, saying it would seek financial compensation for the hundreds of thousands of Australians thought to have had their data shared improperly.

IMF Bentham said it had partnered with law firm Johnson Winter & Slattery to lodge the complaint with the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner.

“The complaint seeks financial recompense for the unauthorised access to and use of their personal data,” IMF Bentham said in a statement.

Its case will seek to include any Australian caught up in the privacy breach who used Facebook between 2010 and 2015.

The Australian action follows a joint class action launched by lawyers in the UK and US against Facebook. The UK’s information commissioner is also conducting its own investigation.

A Facebook spokeswoman said the company was cooperating fully with an investigation by Australia’s privacy commissioner.

“We are fully cooperating with the investigation currently under way by the Australian Privacy Commissioner and will review any additional evidence that is made available when the UK Office of the Information Commissioner releases their report,” the spokeswoman said.

Just 53 Australians downloaded the “this is your digital life” Facebook quiz app responsible for the Cambridge Analytica data breach. Facebook initially said the scandal affected about 310,000 Australians in total.

Last month, Facebook’s director of privacy policy, Steve Satterfield, told a European parliament hearing that the company believed no users in the European Union were affected in the Cambridge Analytica breach.

That’s despite earlier estimates that 2.7 million users in the European Union had their data improperly shared.