(Reuters) – Facebook Inc has not notified the more than 530 million users whose details were obtained by abusing a feature before 2019 and recently released in a database, currently has no plans to do so not, a company spokesman said. Wednesday.
Business Insider reported last week that phone numbers and other details from user profiles are available in a public database. Facebook said in a blog post on Tuesday that “malicious actors” obtained the data before September 2019 by “scraping” profiles using a vulnerability in the platform’s tool to sync contacts.
The Facebook spokesperson said the social media company is not confident that it has the full visibility that users should be notified about. He said that it also takes into account that users cannot solve the problem and that the data is publicly available to decide not to notify users. Facebook said it was punching the hole after the problem was identified at the time.
The deleted information does not contain financial information, health information or passwords, Facebook said. However, the data collected may provide valuable information for hacks or other misuse.
Facebook, long scrutinized over how it handles privacy with users, reached a major settlement with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission in 2019 over its investigation into allegations that users misused user data.
The data protection commission in Ireland, the European Union’s chief regulator of the European Union, said on Tuesday it had contacted the company about the data leak. He is said to have “received no proactive communication from Facebook” but now has contact.
The July 2019 FTC settlement requires Facebook to report details of unauthorized access to data to 500 or more users within thirty days of an incident being confirmed.
The Facebook spokesman declined to comment on the company’s talks with regulators, but said he was in touch to answer their questions.
Reporting by Elizabeth Culliford in New York; Edited by Matthew Lewis