Facebook’s latest privacy blunder exposes 14 million private posts to the public

A new Facebook blunder has led to the exposure of private posts (or those set only to be shared to a limited number of contacts) of as many as 14 million users to the public. The bug that caused this issue came about as Facebook developers were developing new ways to share photos and other featured items in user profiles. As a result, from May 18 to May 27, the private posts were made public. Facebook’s technicians were able to automatically stop making private posts public on May 22 but it took them another five days to fully restore the privacy settings of those affected posts. Facebook has started notifying on Thursday the users who have been affected by the bug. The company has also been referring users to this Privacy Basics Page.

“We have fixed this issue, and, starting today, we are letting everyone affected know and asking them to review any posts they made during that time,” Facebook Chief Privacy Officer Erin Egan said in the statement. “To be clear, this bug did not impact anything people had posted before—and they could still choose their audience just as they always have. We’d like to apologize for this mistake.”

Source: Ars Technica