An internal email that accidentally leaked from Facebook to a reporter revealed the company's intentions to characterize the recent data leak as "normal" and as a "broader social media issue."
Facebook found recently at the center of a controversy over the leak of its users' data. Earlier this month, Hudson Rock researchers they revealed that data belonging to approximately 533 million social network users had been posted on the internet.
The company confirmed the leak of "old” of data. One problem functionalA flaw in the social network's contacts platform, which has now been patched, allowed the data to leak, according to the company.
The leak and subsequent online publication of the data caused widespread outrage review and on 14 April, the Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) said that it plans to launch an investigation to determine if Facebook violated the GDPR regulations.
Now, an internal email leaked to the media (Dutch article) revealed how Facebook is preparing to manage the leak.
This month, Data News editor Pieterjan Van Leemputten posted a number of questions on Facebook asking for an update on the data leak.
However, Facebook mistakenly included the journalist in an internal email where company executives were discussing a "long-term strategy" for dealing with such incidents.
"Assuming media coverage continues to decline, we are not planning any further statements on this issue," the email said.
"In the long run, however, we expect more leaks and we believe it is important to look at it as a broad social media issue and report that such incidents occur regularly."
"To do this, the team is proposing a follow-up publication in the coming weeks that will talk more broadly about our anti-leakage work and provide more transparency about the scale of the work we are doing in this area," continues the message .
"While this may reflect the significant volume of leak activity, we hope it will help to normalize that leaks occur regularly and to avoid criticism that we are not transparent about these incidents."
