A bug in the software of Facebook adapted privacy settings of users, without them knowing about it. The settings for message sharing were set to public. Several US media, including CNBC, writing Thursday by Facebook that the bug between 18 and 27 May was active.
According to Facebook, some fourteen million users may have been affected by the bug. The privacy settings were adjusted so that messages that had to be sent as private by default suddenly appeared on the public.
The error has now been corrected, says privacy head Erin Egan of Facebook. “We inform everyone affected by the bug, and we ask them to review the settings of sent messages in the relevant period, for which we apologise.”
Facebook has been in the news a lot lately because of a data scandal surrounding Cambridge Analytica. The company received personal data of 87 million users in 2015.
MPs questioned Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg in the United States and the EU. It was mainly about the privacy policy of Facebook.
