Tech Brief: Facebook Says it "Unintentionally Uploaded" 1.5 Million Users' Email Contacts Without Their Consent

Facebook's privacy blunders are not going away anytime soon. In what's the latest revelation to come from Business Insider, the social network has said that it "unintentionally uploaded" the email contact information of 1.5 million new users since May 2016 without their consent. The disclosure comes in the wake of another security incident late last month which prompted some users to enter their email accounts' passwords in order to verify their identities. Business Insider found that if a user were to enter his or her email password, Facebook took the liberty of importing the contacts without even asking for the user's permission, and had them "fed into Facebook's systems, where they were used to improve Facebook's ad targeting, build Facebook's web of social connections, and recommend friends to add."

Here's Facebook's statement in full (via Business Insider): "Last month we stopped offering email password verification as an option for people verifying their account when signing up for Facebook for the first time. When we looked into the steps people were going through to verify their accounts we found that in some cases people's email contacts were also unintentionally uploaded to Facebook when they created their account. We estimate that up to 1.5 million people's email contacts may have been uploaded. These contacts were not shared with anyone and we're deleting them. We've fixed the underlying issue and are notifying people whose contacts were imported. People can also review and manage the contacts they share with Facebook in their settings."