Home Technology Facebook caught stealing email contacts of 1.5 million users over the past...

Facebook caught stealing email contacts of 1.5 million users over the past 3 years

Facebook has found itself in the midst of yet another privacy scandal. This time the company stands accused of having stored about 1.5 million email info without consent of the individual users.

All of this has been under the guise of performing email verification which Facebook made some users go through to become members of the social media platform. If that is not enough, Facebook accessed the contact list of the users on the pretext of enabling the user to connect with all those that they might know. Of course, such name will eventually become part of the ‘people you may know’ list that Facebook shows for the users to make new connections.

The worst part of it is that the social media company embarked on such adventurism with the users being completely unaware of it all. What’s more, all of it has been prevalent since May 2016, which means the company has been on to it for almost three years now.

Facebook though has stated the email details were confined to their servers only and were never shared with any third party sources. The company also apologised for the lapse and said they have already started with the damage control act. That involves deleting the email details from their records, besides also informing the affected users of the breach.

The social media giant also said they have stopped the controversial practice of making first-time users of having to go for email verification. This should be another consolation for those who have either been affected or are looking to be part of the social media house.

Interestingly, seeking email details of users during the registering process hasn’t been a universal one, which means it could be a secretive plan to actually gather user data on a low key basis. After all, the company needs to have user info as part of its advertising strategy, something that happens to be its prime revenue stream over the years.

Worth mentioning, this also reminds us of one of the biggest privacy scandals Facebook has found itself in recent years – the Cambridge Analytica. That was when the company was accused of having provided key user info to a research firm for profiling purposes.

Besides, it has also been into another clandestine operation where it actually paid teens in return for complete usage info of their mobile devices.