Facebook has revealed it gave dozens of app developers, device and software makers special access to user data, The Wall Street Journal reported Sunday.
Citing 747 pages of documents released to Congress just before midnight Friday, the disclosure contrasts with the social network’s previous public statements that it restricted personal information to outsiders, the news outlet reported.
The latest data revealed the special deals were required to give app developers time to get in compliance with Facebook policy changes, and to let them create versions of the social network for their products.
The company divulged that it’s still sharing information of users’ friends, such as name, gender, birth date, current city or hometown, photos and page likes, with 61 app developers nearly six months after it said it stopped access to this data in 2015.
Facebook said it gave the firms — which ranged from the dating app Hinge to shipping giant United Parcel Service Inc.—a six-month extension for them to “come into compliance” with the 2015 policy.
In addition, five other companies “theoretically could have accessed limited friends’ data” because of access they received as part of a Facebook experiment, the company said in the document, the Journal reported.
Fourteen companies still have access to information about Facebook’s users, the Journal reported.
The data was provided to the House Energy and Commerce Committee in response to hundreds of questions from the committee, in front of which Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg testified in April.
Facebook‘s handling of its user data has been under scrutiny since March when revelations surfaced that political analytics firm Cambridge Analytica, which aided President Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, purchased data on 87 million users without their consent.
The social network also said in Friday’s document that it shared information about its users with 52 hardware and software makers, including Amazon, Microsoft and Apple and some Chinese firms like Huawei Technologies Co. and Alibaba Group Holding, the Journal reported.