(Reuters) – Facebook Inc. did not notify more than 530 million users whose data was obtained through the misuse of a feature before 2019 and was recently made public in a database, and currently he has no plans to do so, a company spokesman said on Wednesday.
Business Insider reported last week that phone numbers and other details of user profiles were available in a public database. Facebook said Tuesday in a blog post that “malicious actors” had obtained the data before September 2019 by “scratching” profiles through a vulnerability in the platform’s tool to sync contacts.
The Facebook spokesman said the social media company was not confident in having full visibility on users who should be alerted. He said it was also taken into account that users could not fix the problem and that the data was publicly available to decide not to notify them. Facebook has said it plugged the hole after identifying the problem at the time.
The scratched information did not include financial information, health information or passwords, Facebook said. However, the data collected could provide valuable information for hackers or other abuses.
Facebook, which has long been examining how it manages users ’privacy, reached an agreement in 2019 with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission on its investigation into allegations that the company misused the user data.
The Irish Data Protection Commission, the European Union’s main regulator for Facebook, said on Tuesday it had contacted the company about data leakage. He said he did not receive “any proactive Facebook communication,” but was now in touch.
The July 2019 FTC resolution requires Facebook to report details of unauthorized access to data from 500 or more users within 30 days of confirming an incident.
The Facebook spokesman declined to comment on the company’s talks with regulators, but said he was in touch to answer their questions.
Reports of Elizabeth Culliford in New York; Edited by Matthew Lewis