Meta says employee laptop tracking data was exposed internally

In short: Meta is investigating a security issue that may have let employees inside the company access sensitive data collected from coworkers’ work laptops.

What happened

Meta left potentially sensitive information from employee laptops accessible to anyone inside the company, according to an internal security notice seen by WIRED and three employees familiar with the issue.

The information came from a program Meta started in April called the Model Capability Initiative. The program collected data from corporate laptops to help train AI models, meaning software that learns patterns from examples (like teaching by showing many demonstrations). Employees say the collected data could include keystrokes, mouse clicks, and what appeared on their screens.

The internal notice said “employee data across 45,000 hive tables” was exposed. Hive is a way to store and organize large amounts of data (like many filing cabinets in a shared records room). Documents reviewed by WIRED said the exposed data included “full prompts and transcriptions, private conversations, people and performance data.”

Meta spokesperson Tracy Clayton said the company is investigating and said the program had privacy safeguards. Clayton also said Meta has no indication so far that employees improperly accessed the data. Sources told WIRED the incident has been marked as closed, which suggests it was likely fixed.

Why it matters

This matters because the data described could include very personal work details, and possibly sensitive personal moments that happened on a work laptop. It also adds to an ongoing dispute at Meta, where more than 1,600 employees previously signed a petition warning that collecting this kind of tracking data could create security and legal risks if it leaked.

Source: Wired