Report: Facebook Has No Plans to Warn 500M Users Affected by Data Leak

Social media giant Facebook has not notified more than 530 million users whose personal details were leaked due to a poorly-coded feature on the platform and recently made public, and has no plans to do so according to a company spokesperson.

A recent report from Reuters states that Facebook has not notified the more than 530 million users whose details were obtained due to one of Facebook’s own features and recently made public in an online database, and has no plans to do so.

Breitbart News recently reported that hackers published the phone numbers and personal data of 533 million Facebook users, including users’ full names, locations, phone numbers, and email addresses. Via Business Insider:

A user in a low level hacking forum on Saturday published the phone numbers and personal data of hundreds of millions of Facebook users for free online.

The exposed data includes personal information of over 533 million Facebook users from 106 countries, including over 32 million records on users in the US, 11 million on users in the UK, and 6 million on users in India. It includes their phone numbers, Facebook IDs, full names, locations, birthdates, bios, and — in some cases — email addresses.

Insider reviewed a sample of the leaked data and verified several records by matching known Facebook users’ phone numbers with the IDs listed in the data set. We also verified records by testing email addresses from the data set in Facebook’s password reset feature, which can be used to partially reveal a user’s phone number.

A Facebook spokesperson told Reuters that the company is not confident it had full visibility on which users would need to be notified and also took into account that users could not fix the issue and the data was publicly available. Facebook claims that it fixed the bug that left the details vulnerable in the first place already.

Ireland’s Data Protection Commission, the European Union’s lead regulator for Facebook, stated that it contacted the company about the leak this week. It said it received “no proactive communication from Facebook” but has since been in contact with the company.