Facebook fired 52 workers between January 2014 and August 2015 for abusing their access to private user data including one man who tracked a woman to a hotel after a fight and another who found his date's location when she stopped answering his texts, according to a new book.
The shocking details are revealed in the explosive new book 'An Ugly Truth: Inside Facebook's Battle for Domination', penned by journalists Sheera Frenkel and Cecilia Kang and offering an inside look into the rise and fall of the social media giant.
In an excerpt of the book, shared by The Telegraph, the authors reveal that, on average, three employees every month were caught exploiting private data of Facebook users for their own personal gains, such as tracking the current location of users, accessing their private messages and viewing their deleted photos.
It is not known how many other staff members could also have abused the free reign afforded to them by Facebook but were never caught.
At the time, over 16,000 employees had access to private user data with the organization relying on the honesty and goodwill of its workforce not to invade the privacy of users or use it for malicious means.
One employee told the book's authors any tightening of restrictions would have been 'antithetical to Mark's DNA' - referring to CEO Zuckerberg.
Facebook fired 52 workers between January 2014 and August 2015 for abusing their access to user data, according to new book 'An Ugly Truth: Inside Facebook's Battle for Domination' (above), penned by journalists Sheera Frenkel and Cecilia Kang
In one shocking instance, a male engineer accessed the data of a woman he had gone on holiday with to track her location after she left the hotel room they were sharing after a fight, the book reveals.
The two had traveled together on a European holiday and gotten into a fight.
'The engineer tracked her to her new hotel after she left the room they had been sharing,' reads the book, adding that he had used the data to 'confront' her.
Another male engineer used his access to user data to track down and find information about a woman he had gone on a date with days earlier.
According to the book, the engineer had believed the date went well but the woman stopped answering his messages the following day.
After drinking beers at the end of a work day, he returned to the office and used his access to search for his date.
The spurned man gained access to a wealth of information on the woman within a matter of minutes, the book reveals.
Personal information included 'years of private conversations with friends over Facebook Messenger, events attended, photographs uploaded (including those she had deleted), and posts she had commented or clicked on.'
The engineer learned 'more information than the engineer could possibly have gotten over the course of a dozen dinners,' the book reveals.
He also learned her location at that very moment in time because she had the Facebook app installed on her smartphone.
