Brace yourselves, Facebook users: another privacy scandal may be afoot.

A Sunday report from The New York Times reveals that the social network offered Apple, Samsung, and dozens of other device makers "access to vast amounts of its users' personal information," including, in some cases, the data of users' friends who "believed they had barred any sharing."

The data sharing reportedly occurred years ago, "before Facebook apps were widely available on smartphones," allowing the device makers—at least 60 in total, also including Amazon, BlackBerry, and Microsoft—to "offer customers popular features of the social network, such as messaging, 'like' buttons, and address books" on their gadgets.

The Times says "most" of those partnerships at still in effect, though Facebook started "winding them down in April" in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal. Apple tells the Times its access to the data ended in September; Amazon and Samsung declined to comment.

The practice may have violated Facebook's 2011 agreement with the Federal Trade Commission to be more transparent about its privacy policies, the report notes.

In a Sunday blog post, Facebook defended the practice. The company said it launched the software in question a decade ago—before app stores were really a thing—to "help get Facebook onto mobile devices."

At the time, "we built a set of device-integrated APIs that allowed companies to recreate Facebook-like experiences for their individual devices or operating systems," Facebook Vice President of Product Partnerships Ime Archibong explained. "Given that these APIs enabled other companies to recreate the Facebook experience, we controlled them tightly from the get-go. These partners signed agreements that prevented people's Facebook information from being used for any other purpose than to recreate Facebook-like experiences."

Archibong went on to say that Facebook is "not aware of any abuse by these companies."

The Times specifically takes issue with Facebook's practice of letting these device partners "override sharing restrictions." The newspaper found that those partners can "obtain data about a user's Facebook friends, even those who have denied Facebook permission to share information with any third parties."

One privacy expert the Times spoke to likened it to "having door locks installed, only to find out that the locksmith also gave keys to all of his friends."

From the impact of fake news on the 2016 presidential election to its Cambridge Analytical scandal, Facebook and its CEO Mark Zuckerberg have a habit of initially downplaying issues that come to light and later apologizing. Most recently, he denied that Facebook has a monopoly problem during a contentious appearance before European regulators.