We have news of yet another investigation which is taking place on Facebook in New York. This has now become sort of familiar thing with Facebook. Every month, we see that Facebook is being investigated or fined for their data scandals from the past. In this latest investigation, the company has invited trouble for the recent email collection that was highlighted. Last week, we reported that Facebook collected email accounts of its users who signed up from 2104 till now.
However, the company did not notify its users about the collection of their emails. Also, Facebook’s email collection was followed by asking for users’ passwords as well. After this, Facebook used them to upload their email contacts. Reportedly, this data was used by Facebook to suggest friends. But it was also used to target ads better on users.
Obviously, this was serious and now action is being taken against Facebook for the same. While the email account collection scandal was out, Facebook said that they are deleting all the data collected till now. However, that was definitely not enough on the part of Facebook. “New York Attorney General Letitia James announced that her office is opening an investigation into Facebook over its scraping of millions users’ email contacts lists”, Mashable reports.
In a statement released by General Letitia James, she said that
Facebook has repeatedly demonstrated a lack of respect for consumers’ information while at the same time profiting from mining that data
Although Facebook says that it “unintentionally” collected those email accounts from users, it is still a very serious situation for its users. According to James, Facebook’s claim of 1.5 million contact databases being collected for its email verification process may turn out to be much higher. The total number of users whose data was collected improperly could be hundreds of millions adds James.