New York, December 24 (RHC)-- The New York Times reports Facebook gave intrusive access to users’ personal data to dozens of other Silicon Valley companies, exempting them from Facebook’s privacy rules even as it misled its users into thinking their data was protected. 

The Times investigation found that companies like Microsoft, Spotify, Netflix and Amazon were given access to far more Facebook users’ data than even Cambridge Analytica, the British PR firm that collected the data of 87 million Americans in a bid to sway the 2016 presidential election for Donald Trump.

The data sharing appeared to violate terms of a 2011 consent agreement with the Federal Trade Commission on user privacy.  Meanwhile, Twitter says it’s investigating whether state-sponsored hackers were able to gather personal data from its users.  Twitter says the hack could be related to unusual traffic from IP addresses in China and Saudi Arabia.