As many as 14 million Facebook users were effected in May.
Due to a recently discovered Facebook software bug, up to 14 million users may have posted private information to the public between May 18th and 22nd, said the social media giant.
Even users who had previously selected a more restricted sharing option were effected.
The Facebook software bug reportedly set posts to be shared with “everyone,” even if a user had selected stricter account privacy settings in regard to who can see their posts. After the glitch was discovered and fixed, all posts made during the glitch period have since been restored to the user’s default privacy setting. That being said, it took Facebook until May 27th to make this happen.
“This bug occurred as we were building a new way to share featured items on your profile, like a photo,” explained Facebook chief privacy offer Erin Egan in a Facebook newsroom post.
“Since these featured items are public, the suggested audience for all new posts – not just these items – was set to public.”
This Facebook software bug problem isn’t the first time the social media network has had privacy issues.
This bug problem is the most recent privacy scandal for the globe’s largest social medial company. Back in April, QR Code Press reported that Facebook co-founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, was questioned by a House oversight panel about Facebook privacy fails. This was in regard to the Cambridge Analytica scandal, in which personal user data was sold to malicious third parties via Facebook’s previous privacy loopholes.
In addition to this scandal, the company recently garnered more spotlight after it revealed that over the past decade it had signed data-sharing agreements with more than 60 manufactures, including Apple, Samsung and Huawei.
“We’ve heard loud and clear that we need to be more transparent about how we built our product and how those product use your data,” Egan further commented in the news post.
She added that this doesn’t only apply to updates and changes but also when things go wrong, which was the purpose of the June 7th news post.
The Facebook software bug did not affect posts prior to the glitch, according to Egan. That said, she did say that Facebook users who posted publicly during this time are being notified to review their posts.
