Hundreds of millions of Facebook users recently had their records exposed on Amazon cloud servers. This comes about a year after Mark Zuckerberg gave a public apology over the hijacking of millions of personal data from his social media app.

 

Two third-party Facebook application developers reportedly collected data on Amazon’s cloud computing servers. The way in which it was stored has now given the public the opportunity to download it.

 

One of the third-party companies stored data of more than 540 million records making up 146 GB of data. These records include comments, likes, reactions and account names, all recorded on Amazon cloud servers.

 

Speculations

According to a cyber risk research company, the data had been gathered through a Facebook integration. Apparently, Facebook allows third-party app developers to integrate websites and applications from its platform. This is so that it can carry out certain functions on behalf of Facebook.

 

 

However, Facebook said its policies forbid storing its information in a public database. It said it had since worked with Amazon to take down the databases.

 

This would mean that Facebook does not have control over users’ data. The social media giants recently faced widespread criticism over its struggles to protect its users. The app has more than two billion users.

 

In 2018, the Cambridge Analytica scandal broke. A data firm was able to access information of over 80 million Facebook users without their knowledge. The firm was connected to America’s President Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.

 

Also, in the same year, attackers were able to gain access to nearly 50 million users on the platform. The company said the attackers had exploited a bug.

 

The UK had, in October 2018, fined Facebook with a £500,000 fine over the Cambridge Analytica scandal. The US Federal Trade Commission is also looking to levy a fine against them for violating the data privacy agreement.