Facebook "unintentionally" saves 1.5 million email addresses

Facebook has to justify itself for a questionable data collection of unknown magnitude. As the magazine "Business Insider" reported, since May 2016 Facebook has collected the e-mail contacts of some new users without asking for permission.

Facebook announced on Wednesday that it may have "unintentionally" uploaded the email contacts of up to 1.5 million newly registered users. It's just about "some cases," they say.

In relation to far more than two billion Facebook users and previous scandals of the company sounds that once unspectacular - just like another glitch or another breach of trust in a long list of problems.

Those directly affected should be informed

However, this time it is unclear how many more people have indirectly become part of the data collection by landing their contact details on Facebook without any action. However, a typical e-mail address book usually consists of more than a handful of contacts - so the data breach could actually affect tens of millions of Internet users indirectly.

Facebook writes in its opinion that the problem is now solved. Users whose e-mail contact lists have been uploaded should now be informed. It is said that the contact details were shared with no one and would now be deleted.

The data was used

As it came to data collection, Facebook does not explain in detail in its opinion, but "Business Insider" already. So on Facebook, until recently there was a way to verify with their email log-in data. However, when users entered their email password, the email contacts appeared to have been automatically uploaded - without the user being asked to vote for it.

According to the magazine, Facebook used the data for his friend's suggestions. According to a tweet by "Business Insider" author Rob Price, Facebook has also confirmed that the data was also used for the Group's advertising business.

Update: A Facebook spokesperson has confirmed that it has been used to "improve ads."

"Business Insider" writes, Facebook already offered an option before May 2016, over which accounts could be verified with the E-Mail-Log-in-data and at the same time - voluntarily - could release their contact lists for the upload to the users. However, this feature had been changed, with the text hint for data uploading disappeared. The data had been uploaded during use.

According to Facebook's statement, the account verification via e-mail password was discontinued in March 2019. The feature was already before the now officially confirmed read out of contact data in the criticism, because it asked users to type their email password on a third party.