Facebook: Bug may have affected 7M users
NEW YORK — Facebook said Friday that a software bug affecting nearly 7 million users may have exposed a broader set of photos to app developers than what those users intended.
Although this doesn’t mean the photos were actually seen by anyone, the revelation of the bug offers another reminder of how much data Facebook has on its 2.27 billion users and how often these sorts of slip-ups happen.
In a blog post, the company said the bug affected 6.8 million who granted permission for third-party apps to access the photos. Facebook said the users’ photos may have been exposed for 12 days in September and that the bug was fixed.
When people give apps access to their photos, it means only photos posted on their Facebook page.
Facebook says the bug potentially gave developers access to other photos, such as those shared on Marketplace or on Facebook Stories. The bug also affected photos that people uploaded to Facebook but chose not to post or could not post for technical reasons.
The problem comes in a year fraught with privacy scandals and other problems for the world’s biggest social network.
Revelations that the datamining firm Cambridge Analytica improperly accessed data from as many as 87 million users led to congres- sional hearings and changes in what sorts of data Facebook lets outside developers access.
On Thursday, to counter the bad rap it’s gotten about privacy, Facebook hosted a one-day “pop-up” to talk to users about their settings.
Chief Privacy Officer Erin Egan was on hand to answer questions. Asked by a reporter what grade she’d give Facebook for its privacy work in the past year, she said “B.” By 2019, she said she hopes the improvements will result in an “A.”