A newly discovered Facebook bug may have inadvertently compromised the contact information of 6 million users, the company says.
The bug, which has since
been repaired, was part of the Download Your Information tool, which
lets Facebook users export all the data from profiles, such as posts to
their timeline and conversations with friends. People using the tool may
have downloaded inadvertently the contact information for people they
were somehow connected to.
Some people upload their
contact lists or address books to Facebook, which the company then uses
to suggest new friends they can connect with who are already using the
service.
Though the number of
people impacted is sizable, the actual spread of their contact
information appears to be limited. The phone numbers and e-mail
addresses were not exposed to developers or posted publicly. It is only
shown to people they had at least a tentative connection with, and who
may have already had their contact information. Even in that pool, it
was only exposed to people who had used the data-exporting tool.
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