Facebook scraped data on 530 million users before September 2019
Facebook Inc. said on Tuesday that a recently reported data leak affecting around 530 million users which stemmed from a misuse of a feature that the company launched in 2019 and that the company had plugged the hole after identifying the problem at the time.
Reports said that phone numbers and other details from user profiles were available in a public database.
Facebook said “malicious actors” had obtained the data prior to September 2019 by “scraping” profiles using a vulnerability in the social media service’s tool to sync contacts.
The company said it identified the issue at the time and modified the tool.
“As a result of the action we took, we are confident that the specific issue that allowed them to scrape this data in 2019 no longer exists,” Facebook said.
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Read more: Facebook says data on 530 million users ‘scraped’ before September 2019
