FACEBOOK has reportedly deleted messages that Mark Zuckerberg sent to others over fears the information would be leaked.

TechCrunch reports that three separate sources have revealed they had received messages from Zuckerberg that have now mysteriously disappeared from their Facebook inboxes.

However, their replies to his messages still remain.

Facebook confirmed that it had deleted these messages for security reasons.

“After Sony Pictures’ emails were hacked in 2014 we made a number of changes to protect our executives’ communications. These included limiting the retention period for Mark’s messages in Messenger. We did so in full compliance with our legal obligations to preserve messages,” the company said.

Facebook has never informed users that it had this sort of power, nor are regular users able to do the same thing. Users can only delete messages from their own inboxes.

None of Facebook’s terms of service appear to give it the right to remove content from users’ accounts unless it violates the company’s community standards.

Zuckerberg’s personal messages have come back to haunt him before. In 2010, Silicon Valley Insider published messages from a 19-year-old Zuckerberg to a friends just after he started his company, then called The Facebook, back in 2004.

“Yea so if you ever need info about anyone at harvard ... just ask ... I have over 4000 emails, pictures, addresses, sns” Zuckerberg wrote.

“What!? how’d you manage that one?” they asked.

“People just submitted it ... I don’t know why ... they ‘trust me’ ... dumb f**ks” Zuckerberg replied.

Zuckerberg later told The New Yorker he regretted sending those messages.

“If you’re going to go on to build a service that is influential and that a lot of people rely on, then you need to be mature, right? I think I’ve grown and learned a lot,” he said.

It comes as Facebook reels from the data leak of at least 87 million users’ information during the 2016 US election to Cambridge Analytica.

Zuckerberg will testify before US Congress this week on the leak and what he is doing to protect the information of users.