(Reuters) – Facebook Inc. has not notified the more than 530 million users whose details were obtained through the misuse of a feature before 2019 and recently made public in a database and has no plans to do so. , a company spokesman said Wednesday.
Business Insider reported last week that phone numbers and other details in user profiles were available in a public database. Facebook said in a blog post on Tuesday that “malicious actors” had obtained the data before September 2019 by “scraping” profiles using a vulnerability in the platform’s tool for synchronizing contacts.
A Facebook spokesman said the social networking company is not confident that it has full visibility on users who should be notified. He said he also took into account the fact that users could not solve the problem and that the data is available to the public when they decide not to notify users. Facebook said it blocked the hole after identifying the issue at the time.
The written information did not include financial information, health information or passwords, Facebook said. However, the data collected could provide valuable information for hacks or other abuses.
Facebook, which has long been under control over how it handles user privacy, in 2019 reached a benchmark solution with the US Federal Trade Commission over its investigations into the company’s allegations. -used abusive user data.
The Data Protection Commission of Ireland, the European Union’s main regulator for Facebook, said on Tuesday it had contacted the company about the data leak. He said he had not received “any proactive communication from Facebook”, but was now in touch.
The July 2019 FTC agreement requires Facebook to report details of unauthorized access to data for 500 or more users within 30 days of an incident being confirmed.
A Facebook spokesman declined to comment on the company’s talks with regulators, but said he was in touch to answer their questions.
Report by Elizabeth Culliford in New York; Edited by Matthew Lewis