Facebook Inc. is investigating a report that personal details of more than 267 million users of the social media platform were exposed online.

Tech website Comparitech first revealed that Facebook users' information, including IDs, phone numbers and names, were "left exposed on the web for anyone to access without a password."

Bob Diachenko, a security researcher who teamed up with Comparitech, believes that the exposed data roots from an illegal scraping operation or a Facebook API abuse by criminals in Vietnam. The data was also shared on a hacker forum as a download, according to Diachenko. The information had been online for about two weeks before access was removed.

In a statement to Engadget.com, a Facebook representative said it believes the exposed data is "likely information obtained before changes we made in the past few years to better protect people's information."