Facebook has admitted to a year-long security breach which has seen the person details of 6 million users inadvertently exposed.
Blaming a technical glitch for the latest privacy concerns, Facebook has suggested that the email addresses and phone numbers of millions of social accounts were accidentally made accessible to unauthorised users. The Issue has reportedly been on-going for the past year.
Suggesting that it is “upset and embarrassed” by the data breach, Facebook has claimed that "there is no evidence that this bug has been exploited maliciously.”
Despite the problems, which have seen users downloading contact details of their friends lists gaining additional users’ details, Facebook has claimed it fixed the issue within 24 hours of being alerted to the glitch last week. Despite this fast reaction, Facebook held off alerting users to the issues until late Friday, a move that could be seen as an attempt to dodge widespread bad publicity.
Facebook has claimed that the delay in alerting its 1.1 billion users to the data breach was due to company procedure meaning only those users affected by the problems and regulators been notified first.
"We currently have no evidence that this bug has been exploited maliciously and we have not received complaints from users or seen anomalous behavior on the tool or site to suggest wrongdoing," an official statement on the Facebook blog said.
An official spokesperson for the social behemoth stated: "It's still something we're upset and embarrassed by, and we'll work doubly hard to make sure nothing like this happens again."
Read More: Facebook Home Review
Via: Reuters
