Facebook says data of 530 million users was ‘scraped’ before September 2019

07 April 2021 - 08:12 By Reuters
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Facebook said 'malicious actors' obtained the data in 2019 but the company addressed the problem at the time. File photo.
Facebook said 'malicious actors' obtained the data in 2019 but the company addressed the problem at the time. File photo.
Image: Dado Ruvic

Facebook Inc on Tuesday said a recently reported data leak potentially affecting 530 million users stemmed from the misuse of a feature in 2019 and the company plugged the hole after identifying the problem at the time.

Business Insider reported last week that phone numbers and other details from user profiles were available in a public database.

Facebook said “malicious actors” had obtained the data before September 2019 by “scraping” profiles using a vulnerability in the social media service’s tool to sync contacts.

The company said it identified the issue at the time and modified the tool.

“As a result of the action we took, we are confident the specific issue that allowed them to scrape this data in 2019 no longer exists,” Facebook said in a blog post.


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