Facebook made additional user data available to some firms after 2015

Facebook Inc. inked data-sharing agreements with a group of partners that included special access to member records after 2015, when Facebook said it cut off all developers from such data, The Wall Street Journal reported late Friday. Facebook stock was down 0.5% after hours. Known as "whitelists," the deals gave this group of companies access to information about users' friends, including phone numbers and an internal Facebook data point known as "friend link" that measures how close users are with one another. The agreements were with companies such as RBC Capital Markets and Nissan Motor Co. and demonstrate that Facebook doled out access to more firms than was previously reported. It raises questions about the total number of firms and people who has access to the data of the more than two billion Facebook users, according to the Journal. The Menlo Park, Calif. company said it had made several deals after 2015 to "improve the user experience," test new features and allow some of the partners to "wind down" existing projects, the Journal said. Earlier this week reports surfaced of Facebook partnerships with more than 60 device makers in previously undisclosed data-sharing partnerships. Facebook stock is up 7.2% this year, as the S&P 500 index has gained 3.6%.