New York Attorney General investigates Facebook

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Last week, Facebook (FB) acknowledged having collected up to 1.5 million user email contacts without their consent. The company said email contact lists had been "unintentionally" uploaded to Facebook as a result of a design change in 2016, and that the removal process was ongoing. The practice was first reported by Business Insider.

"It's time for Facebook to be held accountable for how it treats consumers' personal information," said Attorney General of New York State, Letitia James, in an announcement regarding the investigation. James called the incident "the latest demonstration that Facebook does not take seriously its role in protecting our personal information."

Facebook has collected 1.5 million users & # 39; messaging contacts without their knowledge

While Facebook admitted the number of address books involved, the Attorney General's office indicated that it was not clear how many contacts had been collected and that it could reach several hundred million, depending on the number of contacts of an individual.

Facebook said last week that he had not realized that this collection was happening before the beginning of the month by stopping to offer email password verification as an option to people who register for the first time on Facebook.

Although e-mail verification is a common practice for many companies, Facebook has asked some users to provide the password to their personal e-mail accounts.

In recent years, the company has not had a satisfactory record of protecting privacy, and these problems are increasingly public relations problems to financial and legal problems.

Last reminder: Facebook said to expect that an ongoing investigation by the Federal Trade Commission on privacy issues could result in fines ranging from $ 3 billion to $ 5 billion. This would be the first financial penalty imposed on Facebook in the United States since the Cambridge Analytica scandal that broke out in March, and the heaviest penalty imposed by the FTC on a technology company.

In response to the Attorney General's investigation, a Facebook spokesman said the company was "in touch with the Attorney General's Office in the state of New York and was answering their questions about it. ".

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