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Facebook Alerts 14M To Privacy Bug That Changed Status Composer To Public (techcrunch.com)

Posted by msmash on from the joys-Facebook-brings-to-the-world dept.

Facebook has landed itself in yet another self-inflicted privacy debacle. As many as 14 million Facebook users who thought they were posting items that only their friends or smaller groups could see may have been posting that content to the entire world, the company said Thursday. From a report: Facebook's Chief Privacy Officer Erin Egan wrote to TechCrunch in a statement: "We recently found a bug that automatically suggested posting publicly when some people were creating their Facebook posts. 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. 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." The bug was active from May 18th to May 27th, with Facebook able start rolling out a fix on May 22nd. It happened because Facebook was building a 'featured items' option on your profile that highlights photos and other content.

16 of 36 comments (clear)

  1. Yet another reason..... by cayenne8 · · Score: 4, Insightful
    ....not to be on FaceBook!!!

    Lord, it just keeps going....and going....and going....

    --
    Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
    1. Re:Yet another reason..... by bluelip · · Score: 1

      "We'd like to apologize...", but we're not sure??

      It's been 2 weeks and we're just now getting word of this? I don't think they wanted anyone to know.

      --

      Yep, I never spell check.
      More incorrect spellings can be found he
    2. Re:Yet another reason..... by geek · · Score: 2

      They are the Adobe Flash of online privacy

    3. Re:Yet another reason..... by Artem+S.+Tashkinov · · Score: 2

      I'm on facebook and I'm happy: I just assume everything on my profile is publicly accessible. If you think otherwise you're either a gullible person or a clinical idiot. I just cannot understand how rational people can trust their data to be stored "safely" and "privately" by literally thousands of strangers whose only purpose is to make money off you.

    4. Re:Yet another reason..... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      You do understand that short of using a virtual machine to browse only facebook with, that because you are signed into facebook (even if you log out your cookie still has your userid on it) they are actively tracking what sites you are browsing? Have a cookie from facebook and see any page with a like button on it (news article, etc) well facebook now knows you user X went to site Y at time Z and saw content A.

    5. Re:Yet another reason..... by Artem+S.+Tashkinov · · Score: 1

      I'm using anti-tracking add-ons, I don't accept 3d parties cookies, I have browser cache in memory, and I don't allow Facebook to be embedded on websites other than FB itself.

  2. Am I the only one... by Narcocide · · Score: 1

    ... who used to get beaten for not double-checking my homework?

  3. sing it now "we are the world" by zlives · · Score: 2

    "thought they were posting items that only their friends"

    friendship goal achieved... Hello world.

      this is a feature not a bug.

  4. /me points at Facebook users by SeaFox · · Score: 1

    "HA-ha!" /Nelson

  5. I find it strange.. by overnight_failure · · Score: 2

    ..that you never hear about 'bugs' that accidentally make people post privately instead of to everyone.

    I can only presume it's because their default privacy mode is 'none' and the features that change that setting are the ones that are faulty.

    1. Re:I find it strange.. by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      Why do you find it strange? Why would every damn little bug be announced on Slashdot? Do you get KB lists and changelogs from Facebook? I find it strange that people find perfectly reasonable "We have a bug, we are in the news a lot for privacy, we should get on top of this before people freak out" posts strange.

    2. Re:I find it strange.. by overnight_failure · · Score: 1

      My first line was reasonably frivolous, semi-sarcasm laced to present the idea of how Facebook approaches privacy in the second line (which had the barb in it).

  6. Re: This has reached Peak Stupid by sexconker · · Score: 1

    The answer is stupid people. If everyone on the planet stopped using Facebook tomorrow, the company would basically be in a state of emergency within weeks.

    Within hours. It would take them about a minute or so to notice it happened, then a few hours to realize/admit it wasn't a network, monitoring, firewall, government shutdown, etc. issue and instead that people had just dumped it.

  7. I'm off facebook by johnsie · · Score: 1

    Better late than never, but when that new 'privacy policy' thing came up it kind of looked like they wanted me to sell my soul to them. I never accepted and don't plan to. I wonder how many other people this scared off. GDPR is great. And FB tried to avoid protecting people's privacy by moving millions of people's data away from Europe (Ireland). That alone is a red flag.

  8. Keep using.... by MerlTurkin · · Score: 1

    ....facebook you idiots! LOL!

  9. Facebook data-sharing public spotlight 2018 by epine · · Score: 1

    I keep an unusual amount of notes on things. It's a kind of GTD overkill. Anything that visits my mind, I prefer to have nailed down.

    To some degree, this spiralled of its own accord: the more I recorded the faster I got; the faster I got, the more I recorded. It also helps to resolve the never-ending Sophie's Choice selection events among my dozens of major cognitive interests: get a bigger shoe & a less bare cupboard, and keep them all.

    Then along comes Facebook. One mere Facebook folder no longer carries the day.

    And now here's another item for my very narrow (yet non-slim) Facebook/data-sharing_public_spotlight_2018/ auxiliary flood plain.

    I'm kind of surprised my explicit folder name actually fit into the Slashdot subject box. Facebook may break this yet. Stay tuned.