"Inadvertently Downloaded" Facebook Mail Contacts of 1.5 Million Users

Facebook "unintentionally" has garnered email contacts from about 1.5 million of its users over the past three years.

The activity was unearthed when a security researcher noticed that Facebook was asking users to enter their passwords to verify their identity when creating an account, according to Business Insider, who had previously reported on the practice. Those who entered their passwords then saw a pop-up message saying that it was importing their contacts – without asking for permission first, BI reported.

A Facebook spokesperson confirmed that 1.5 million contacts have been collected in this way since May 2016 to help create Facebook's social networking network and recommend to other users to add it as 39; friend.

"Last month, we stopped offering e-mail password verification as an option for people checking their account when they first sign up for Facebook," said a Facebook spokesman. "When we looked at the steps people took to check their accounts, we found that in some cases, people's email contacts were also unintentionally uploaded to Facebook when they created their accounts.

"We corrected the underlying problem and notified the people whose contacts were imported," said Facebook, adding that the contacts were not shared with anyone and that they were deleted. He also pointed out that users can view and manage the contacts that they share with Facebook in their settings.

As the largest social network in the world, Facebook controls the data of over 2 billion people and people who have access to it. The company's data processing practices have been called into question as a result of the Scandal Cambridge Analytica, during which personal information relating to nearly 87 million Facebook users was misused.