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Facebook 'Unintentionally Uploaded' Email Contacts From 1.5M Users (cnet.com)

Posted by msmash on from the gift-that-keeps-giving dept.

Facebook "unintentionally" harvested the email contacts of about 1.5 million of its users during the past three years. From a report: The activity came to light when a security researcher noticed that Facebook was asking users to enter their email passwords to verify their identities when signing up for an account, according to Business Insider, which previously reported on the practice. Those who did enter their passwords then saw a pop-up message that said it was "importing" their contacts -- without first asking permission, BI reported. A Facebook spokesperson confirmed that 1.5 million people's contacts were collected in this manner since May 2016 to help build Facebook's web of social connections and recommend other users to add as friends.

4 of 75 comments (clear)

  1. Unintentionally? by black3d · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Except, they programmed it to do precisely that, so.. intentionally. Just unintentionally raised the ire of folks in doing so.

    --
    "The true measure of a person is how they act when they know they won't get caught." - DSRilk
    1. Re:Unintentionally? by markdavis · · Score: 5, Insightful

      >"Except, they programmed it to do precisely that, so.. intentionally. Just unintentionally raised the ire of folks in doing so."

      +1

      This is just super slimy. And the problem with this type of practice it that it doesn't just violate the privacy of that user, but every single person that user knows.

  2. How About Fining Them $10,000 Per Theft? by crunchygranola · · Score: 5, Insightful

    That seems like a fairly light penalty. Now if we count each user who had their contacts stolen in this manner than would be a $15 billion dollar fine. But I think that each contact stolen should be the definitions of "theft" in this case. So if we the average address book has, say 50 contacts in it, that would be $750 billion. Seems about right for a long running bit of organized crime.

    --
    Second class citizen of the New Gilded Age
  3. Phishing by Kohlrabi82 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    So Facebook was basically running that script like a phishing site to obtain users' passwords. Aren't there laws which apply to that? Or did the lawyers tell them to say "unintentionally" to save themselves from any penalties? Fuck lawyers (and broken legislation).