Facebook has been in hot water for some time now thanks to the breaking Cambridge Analytica story, especially with regards to users’ privacy. However, according to a new revelation told to TechCrunch, the posts of around 14 million users were made public to everyone on the platform.
Posts are set to public by default, but users can change these privacy settings at will. Today, Facebook users began seeing messages from Facebook that encourage them to “Please Review Your Posts.”
The error was a result of developers testing out a new feature, and inadvertently introducing a bug to the system. According to TechCrunch, “The bug was active from May 18th to May 22nd, but it took Facebook until May 27th to switch people’s status composer privacy setting back to what it was before the issue.”
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.”
If you haven’t received this message, it’s still a good idea to check your privacy settings and confirm they are set to your liking.
via TechCrunch
