Facebook users’ personal information could have been accidentally leaked to third parties, in particular advertisers, over the past few years, Symantec Corp said in its official blog.
Third-parties would have had access to personal information such as profiles, photographs and chat, and could have had the ability to post messages, the security software maker said. “As of April 2011, close to 100,000 applications were enabling this leakage,” the blog post said.
“ ... Over the years, hundreds of thousands of applications may have inadvertently leaked millions of access tokens to third parties,” posing a security threat, the blog post said.
The third-parties may not have realised their ability to access the information.
Facebook was notified of this issue and confirmed the leakage, the blog post said, adding that the world’s number one social networking site has taken steps to resolve the issue.