[ad_1]
The Attorney General's Office of the State of New York announced Thursday that he was investigating Facebook for what he called the "unauthorized collection" of 1.5 million notebooks. e-mail addresses.
The social network admitted last week that it "inadvertently downloaded" the contacts of 1.5 million new users of its email since May 2016.
The disclosure comes after a computer security researcher tweeted on Twitter under the pseudonym "e-sushi". Facebook has asked some users to enter their email passwords when they opened new accounts. According to a report by Business Insider, users who entered their email passwords received a pop-up message stating that Facebook was importing the new user's contacts.
In his statement, the Attorney General's Office stated that "the total number of people whose information was obtained irregularly may be [in the] hundreds of millions. "
"It's time for Facebook to be held accountable for how it treats consumers' personal information," said Attorney General Letitia James in a statement. "Facebook has repeatedly demonstrated a lack of respect for consumer information while leveraging the exploitation of this data."
James added that Facebook's announcement last week "is the latest demonstration that Facebook does not take seriously its role in protecting our personal information."
CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP
"We are in contact with the Attorney General's Office in New York State and we are answering their questions about it," a Facebook spokesman told Fox News.
James's predecessor, Eric Schneiderman, Attorney General, opened an investigation in March 2018 into whether Facebook had illegally authorized the collection of users' personal data by the Cambridge Analytica consulting firm, which had worked well for Donald Trump's presidential campaign in 2016.
Kathleen Foster of Fox News contributed to this report.
[ad_2]
Source link