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PHOTO: Associated Press
Facebook Inc has said a bug in its system caused 6 million users' contact information to be inadvertently exposed. The social media company, however, added that the problem has been fixed and that it is in the process of notifying affected users via email.
When managing an account on the social networking site, Facebook prompts users for sharing contact information like email addresses or phone numbers, to better tailor the friend suggestions it issues.
In a blog post on Friday, the company said a bug caused some of this information to be inadvertently stored in association with a person's contact information as part of their Facebook account.
As a result, if someone downloaded an archive of their Facebook account through the "Download Your Information" tool, they may have been provided with additional addresses or telephone numbers for their contacts or people with whom they have some connection.
Because the contact information was provided by other people on Facebook, it was not necessarily accurate.
California-based Facebook, while calling the cause of the problem "pretty technical", said it has no evidence that the bug has been used maliciously and it has not received complaints so far.
The affected accounts represent only a fraction of the over 1 billion users on the social media site.
With inputs from Associated Press
