Facebook, the largest social networking company with a 1.1 billion user base reported on Friday, June 21, 2013 that data of approximately 6 million users have been exposed to unauthorized viewers. The data included information like email IDs and phone numbers. The data breach did not take place in a single day but instead took place over a period of 1 year. Facebook admitted that the data breach was caused by a technical problem in its contact information archive.

Due to this glitch, Facebook users who tried to download the contact information of their friends also managed to get hold of additional information that was not supposed to be made available for download. The security team of Facebook was notified of this technical problem only last week and they worked on it and fixed the problem in 24 hours. However, Facebook acknowledgements came only on Friday afternoon. On Friday, the company explained the issue to its users through its blog.

A spokesperson from Facebook explained that it was a company policy to first notify the affected users and regulators before making news public. Facebook also reported that currently there is no evidence that the data was maliciously used by cybercriminals since there have been no visible anomalous behaviour on the site or user complaints thus far.

The company apologized stating that despite the data breach being limited, it was very embarrassed by the situation and that it is working very hard to make sure that this kind incident never reoccurs in future. This news on a Facebook data breach comes after the disclosure of the PRISM program. The PRISM program is a massive electronic surveillance program launched by the US government and NSA which led to several companies turning over tons of user data to the NSA and US government. The PRISM program is largely criticized by people as it raises questions about liberty and freedom.