New Facebook bug exposed millions of users’ photos, including unposted ones

Remember the days when Facebook wasn’t riddled with issues? We can’t either. The latest one is a software bug that exposed photos of up to 6.8 million users—including photos that haven’t been posted yet. According to the company several third-party apps (1,500 in total) gained access to “a broader set of photos than usual” for a 12-day period in September. Facebook said it’ll reach out to the affected users. The company explains in a blogpost, "When someone gives permission for an app to access their photos on Facebook, we usually only grant the app access to photos people share on their timeline. In this case, the bug potentially gave developers access to other photos."

On top of accessing those on your timeline, these third-party developers gained access to photos posted in places like Stories and Marketplace as well as those that have been uploaded but not posted. The company says they only store photos from incomplete posts for three days. Facebook says it’s working with the affected developers to “delete the photos from impacted users.” The company is also recommending its users to log into any apps where they shared their Facebook photos to check which photos they have access to.