Windows 10: Facebook unintentionally uploaded 1.5 million users email contacts

Brink · Apr 18, 2019

Facebook harvested the email contacts of 1.5 million users without their knowledge or consent when they opened their accounts.

Since May 2016, the social-networking company has collected the contact lists of 1.5 million users new to the social network, Business Insider can reveal. The Silicon Valley company said the contact data was "unintentionally uploaded to Facebook," and it is now deleting them.

The revelation comes after pseudononymous security researcher e-sushi noticed that Facebook was asking some users to enter their email passwords when they signed up for new accounts to verify their identities, a move widely condemned by security experts. Business Insider then discovered that if you entered your email password, a message popped up saying it was "importing" your contacts without asking for permission first.

At the time, it wasn't clear what was happening — but on Wednesday, Facebook disclosed to Business Insider that 1.5 million people's contacts were collected this way and 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.

A Facebook spokesperson said before May 2016, it offered an option to verify a user's account using their email password and voluntarily upload their contacts at the same time. However, they said, the company changed the feature, and the text informing users that their contacts would be uploaded was deleted — but the underlying functionality was not.

Facebook didn't access the content of users' emails, the spokesperson added. But users' contacts can still be highly sensitive data — revealing who people are communicating with and connect to.

While 1.5 million people's contact books were directly harvested by Facebook, the total number of people whose contact information was improperly obtained by Facebook may well be in the dozens or even hundreds of millions, as people sometimes have hundreds of contacts stored on their email accounts. The spokesperson could not provide a figure for the total number of contacts obtained this way...
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Read more: Facebook uploaded 1.5 million users email contacts without permission - Business Insider

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davidhk · Apr 18, 2019

Email contacts missing

I have downloaded Windows 10 and synced my Gmail and Cox email accounts but none of the contacts have shown up.
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1. If you open Mail app and click the + sign for New mail > type first couple of letters of a contact name > will a list of suggested names appear ?

2. Go to All apps > scroll to P > click People. Is the contact list there ?

bestellen · Apr 18, 2019

Deleting contacts from Windows 10

When you say Windows Mail Live are you referring to Mail app or Windows Live Mail?

I suggest you to try the steps provided below and check if it helps.

Open Windows Live Mail.

Press Ctrl + 3 using your keyboard. Right-click on the contact to delete it if it is a single contact.

Highlight all contacts by pressing Ctrl + A.

Click Delete located on the Ribbon bar.

Click OK when you see the message These contacts will also be deleted from Hotmail, Messenger, and other Windows Live services.

After following the steps above, all your contacts that you have manually added to your account will be deleted however, contacts coming from third-party sites such as Facebook will not be deleted unless you remove Facebook from your account.

For Mail app:

Open People app then delete the contact.

Hope this helps in resolving the issue. If the issue persists, do get back to us. We will be happy to assist you.

OrbitzXT · Apr 18, 2019

Yahoo Email Contacts List

At work I have a rather large list of contacts, sometimes I have multiple email addresses within one single contact. For example, lets say I have a contact "Bob", within that contact I have L: emailaddress1@techpowerupisawesome.com and L: emailaddress2@techpowerupisawesome.com. When I begin a new email, if I type "Bob", both of these addresses will appear, but I can only select one. I'd like to select both without having to retype Bob to make the list appear again to click the other.

I'm aware you can click the "To:" button to make the list of contacts appear, but you need to scroll down and find your contact, then shift click to select them all. Scrolling around can be troublesome with the amount of contacts I have. I'm not really interested in making groups for various reasons.

So is what I'm trying to do possible or am I asking too much?

Windows 10: Facebook unintentionally uploaded 1.5 million users email contacts

Facebook unintentionally uploaded 1.5 million users email contacts

Facebook unintentionally uploaded 1.5 million users email contacts

Facebook unintentionally uploaded 1.5 million users email contacts

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