The contact lists of 1.5 million users of the mail “accidentally” appeared on Facebook (3 photos)

The last three years, the company Facebook“Collected” email lists of approximately 1.5 million of its users, without asking for their permission or even notifying them. This happened since May 2016 at the time of registration of new user accounts. As assured in the company, the data were collected unintentionally.

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The fact that the information is collected first reportedsecurity researcher with the nickname e-sushi. He noted that when new accounts are registered in the social network, Facebook sometimes asks users for an email password to verify their identity. Journalists found out that after the password was entered, a notification was displayed stating that contacts were being imported. And the permissions for this were not asked by users.

Why was the data collected, moreover, without demand,until recently was unknown. But on April 17, company representatives gave explanations. They reported that they collected contact lists of users in this way and then entered them into their systems in order to improve targeted advertising, the list of recommended friends and social networking sites.

The Facebook explained that until May 2016, theirUsers could password-authenticate their account and voluntarily give permission to download their contacts, but then they decided to remove this option. The notification that the contacts are loading seems to have been deleted, but the function still continued to work.

As stated by representatives of Facebook, access tothey did not have the content of the correspondence, and they did not transfer the lists of contacts to anyone. Now the company allegedly deletes the data obtained in such an illegal way.

Source: businessinsider.com, businessinsider.com