Facebook says a technical bug may have exposed portions of the personal contact information, such as email addresses or phone numbers, of approximately 6 million users.
In a statement posted on June 21, the social media giant explained the glitch is related to uploading contact lists or address books which are used when creating friend recommendations.
“Because of the bug, some of the information used to make friend recommendations and reduce the number of invitations we send was inadvertently stored in association with people’s contact information as part of their account on Facebook. As a result, if a person went to download an archive of their Facebook account through our Download Your Information (DYI) tool, they may have been provided with additional email addresses or telephone numbers for their contacts or people with whom they have some connection. 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.”
The site says the bug has been fixed, and no other personal or financial information was compromised. The network added they have found no evidence of the bug being “exploited maliciously.”
Facebook asserts it will likely have little impact, they apologized and added, “It’s still something we’re upset and embarrassed by, and we’ll work doubly hard to make sure nothing like this happens again.”
What is the take away? If you want certain information private, don’t post it on Facebook. Easy peasy.
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Kimberley A. Johnson (BIO) – A.K.A. The Anti Coulter is the author of The Virgin Diaries and an activist for women’s rights. Like her on Facebook, Twitter or friend her on FB HERE. |
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