The broad scope of Facebook’s data partnerships — with Apple, Samsung, Amazon and other companies that make or sell phones, tablets, televisions and video game consoles — was reported by The New York Times on Sunday, showing that Facebook had exempted at least 60 hardware makers from restrictions imposed on other companies in 2015. Those restrictions were intended to prevent games and other apps from gaining access to the Facebook information of their customers’ friends.

“I’m extremely concerned that we are just now learning that even more personal user data was provided without consent,” said Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, a senior Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, and one of the lawmakers who questioned Facebook’s chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, at a hearing in April.

Mr. Zuckerberg and other Facebook executives have repeatedly cited the 2015 restrictions to assure policymakers that no outside company could again harvest swaths of personal information without the explicit consent of users, as a contractor for Cambridge Analytica did in 2014. But Facebook officials said this week that they did not consider hardware partners to be outside companies, under the terms of Facebook’s privacy policies and a 2011 consent decree with the Federal Trade Commission.

When Facebook delivers data to a partner device, a Facebook executive said in a statement posted on the company’s website Sunday night, the device maker effectively functions as an extension of Facebook. And when Facebook users decide to share photos or phone numbers with their friends, they also consent to having that information flow to any partner devices their friends use.

“Friends’ information, like photos, was only accessible on devices when people made a decision to share their information with those friends,” said the executive, Ime Archibong. “We are not aware of any abuse by these companies.”