Facebook bug exposes contact information from millions of users
June 22, 2013 – 6:59 AMA bug on Facebook leaked email addresses and phone numbers provided by some 6 million people on the site to certain other users, the company revealed Friday.
What sparked the problem is a bit complicated. The bug caused some of the information that the social network stores to make friend recommendations to be inadvertently stored in association with people’s contact information as part of their Facebook account, the company said Friday on its website.
As a result, if a person were to download an archive of their account through Facebook’s Download Your Information (DYI) tool, additional email addresses or telephone numbers for the person’s contacts, or other people with whom the user is connected, might have been displayed, Facebook said.
“We’ve concluded that approximately six million Facebook users had email addresses or telephone numbers shared,” the company said.
“This contact information was provided by other people on Facebook and was not necessarily accurate, but was inadvertently included with the contacts of the person using the DYI tool,” Facebook explained.
You must be logged in to post a comment.