Facebook does not plan to notify customers who had their personal information exposed after being posted to a website by hackers.
It comes following reports that a database of records from more than 533 million Facebook accounts was shared online. The database was thought to contain hone numbers, email addresses, birthdays and other personal details but did not include sensitive information such as credit card details.
Facebook Project Management Director Mike Clark said in a blog post however that the data was from 2019 using its "contact importer" file and that "in this case we updated it to prevent malicious actors from using software to imitate our app and upload a large set of phone numbers to see which ones matched Facebook users."
Customers will not be informed if they were affected, however, with Facebook instead offering a "help centre page"
Said page is for users concerned that their data may have been released and outlines that only information that was shared publicly on users' profiles at the time of the scraping has been taken, meaning the data does not include information that was shared only with users' friends.
The page also details how users can adjust their privacy settings.
In the post the social media giant also said that they were "working to get this dataset taken down and will continue to aggressively go after malicious actors who misuse our tools wherever possible."
"While we can't always prevent datasets like these from recirculating or new ones from appearing, we have a dedicated team focused on this work,
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