Facebook photo bomb

A software bug in the Facebook system left the photos of up to 6.8 million users exposed, including images that were not shared on the platform.

The social media giant in a blog post Friday revealed the “API bug” granted thirdparty apps access “to a broader set of photos than usual” between Sept. 12 and 25. In total, up to 1,500 apps available through Facebook’s login system had inappropriate access to images shared on several Facebook features, as well as photos that were uploaded, but not published to the site.

“When someone gives permission for an app to access their photos on Facebook, we usually only grant the access to photos people share on their timeline. In this case, the bug potentially gave some developers access to other photos, such as those shared on Marketplace or Facebook Stories,” Tomer Bar, engineering director at Facebook, said.