The largest social network in the world said Wednesday night that email contact lists had been "unintentionally" downloaded from Facebook (FB) following a design change almost two years ago, and the company was in the process of removing them.
Facebook said the problem began three years ago by making changes to the step-by-step verification process that users apply when creating an account on the platform. Before these changes, users had the option to upload their contact lists when opening an account to help them find friends already on Facebook.
But in May 2016, Facebook removed the language that explained that user contact lists could be uploaded to the company's servers when they created their account. This meant that in some cases people's email lists were uploaded to Facebook without their knowledge or consent.
A Facebook spokesman said on Wednesday that the company had not understood that this was happening until April of this year, when it stopped offering the password verification by e-mail as an option for people signing up on Facebook for the first time.
"When we looked at the steps people took to check their accounts, we found that in some cases, those people's email contacts were also unintentionally uploaded to Facebook when they created their accounts," he said. added the spokesperson.
The company said that the lists of contacts downloaded by mistake had not been shared with anyone outside of Facebook. The news was reported for the first time by Business Insider on Wednesday.
Ashkan Soltani, former Chief Technology Officer at the Federal Trade Commission,
tweeted on Wednesday night that he thought it was "one of the most legally enforceable @facebook behaviors to date".
"I am convinced that the regulators will take a look," he said.
The incident is the latest privacy issue on Facebook, which has more than two billion users worldwide. Over the past 18 months, the Cambridge Analytica data scandal has been the biggest security breach in its history.
CEO Mark Zuckerberg responded to the criticism by promising to introduce more privacy protections on the platform, such as encrypted messaging and better data security.
Facebook was also plunged into controversy after a shooter in New Zealand listened to his film March 15: Attack of two mosques in Christchurch with the help of social network video tools. The gunman killed 50 people.
Its WhatsApp instant messaging application has been accused of allowing the spread of false information in India.
Rob McLean contributed to this report.
