Facebook bug set 14 million users' sharing settings to public
Facebook bug set 14 million users' sharing settings to
public
by Heather Kelly June 7, 2018: 3:00 PM ET
Not just another Facebook data scandal
For a period of four days in May, about 14 million
Facebook users around the world had their default sharing setting for all new
posts set to public, the company revealed Thursday.
The bug, which affected those users from May 18 to May
22, occurred while Facebook was testing a new feature.
After Facebook employees discovered the bug, the company
went back and changed the privacy settings for all posts shared by those 14
million users during that time.
Facebook changed every post by those users during the
affected time period to private, including posts that people may have meant to
share publicly. The company told CNN it took five days to make those changes.
Affected Facebook users will get a notification on the
app or website starting Thursday. They'll see a message from Facebook urging
users to "Please Review Your Posts" and a link to a list of what they
shared on Facebook while the bug was active.
Facebook posts typically default to the last
"audience" a post was shared with, such as family members, friends,
or friends except their boss. That default was changed to public for the 14
million users, but if affected users noticed, they could have manually switched
the setting themselves.
"We recently found a bug that automatically
suggested posting publicly when some people were creating their Facebook
posts," said Erin Egan, Facebook's chief privacy officer. "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."
A Facebook spokesperson said the notification is the
start of new proactive and transparent way for the company to handle issues
going forward.
CNNMoney (San Francisco) First published June 7, 2018:
3:00 PM ET
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