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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsFacebook Security Breach Exposes Six Million Email Addresses and Telephone Numbers
Facebook reported on Friday a bug in its system that may have allowed some of a persons contact information (email or phone number) to be accessed by people who either had some contact information about that person or some connection to them.
The bug, which was reported via Facebooks crowdsourced, White Hat security researcher program, was a part of one of Facebooks data download tools. Facebook introduced the tool, named Download Your Information, allows users to do just that: It provides a history of your Facebook data since you joined the network, including Timeline data, contact information, photos and videos.
The social networking giant said about six million email addresses and telephone numbers were shared, but it noted that no other types of personal or financial information were included and only people on Facebook not developers or advertisers have access to the DYI tool. It is understood that the bug has been live since last week, but was deactivated as soon as it was reported and reviewed by the security team.
Part of the problem involved Facebooks contacts importer tool, a way for the social giant to use your communications data to connect you with people you already know on the network. After you upload your contact data from sources like Gmail, Yahoo or other services, the bug would automatically correlate it with other contact information that exists on the network.
So for example, if you have the gmail address of Veronica Smith in your contacts and upload that to Facebook, itll match with Veronicas Yahoo email address if in fact she has entered both on Facebook.
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http://allthingsd.com/20130621/facebook-security-breach-exposes-six-million-email-addresses-and-telephone-numbers/?refcat=news
onehandle
(51,122 posts)hollysmom
(5,946 posts)and no telephone number and a fake name and fake birthdate..........
Ohio Joe
(21,774 posts)People gave their phone number to facebook... oh my, why would anyone do that?
Purveyor
(29,876 posts)can kiss my ass.
Hell, I even ponder the fact that I have given 'this joint' more info than I'm comfortable with.
Just saying...