14 million Facebook users’ private posts move to public due to Facebook bug

In general, a post posted by a Facebook user is pre-set to the visible range, not all users can see. However, a software vulnerability that occurred between May 18 and May 27 this year resulted in posts posted by these users being visible to all users by default.

Although these posts are explicitly marked with “public” at the time of posting, users who are accustomed to the visibility of their pre-set posts may not notice this change.

Facebook said it has fixed the affected posts by changing the visibility from “public” back to the user’s default visible settings. So far, this repair work has been completed. In addition, Facebook also notified about 14 million users affected by this software vulnerability and sent them an alert notice.

Erin Egan, Facebook’s chief privacy officer, said in a statement: “Starting today we are letting everyone affected know and asking them to review any posts they made during that time. We’d like to apologize for this mistake.“

For the cause of the problem, Facebook explained that it was because of a feature that allows users to add tags to their personal information, such as published pictures. This tagged picture is set to be publicly visible by default. Due to a software vulnerability, this setting is applied to posts posted by users for a period of time.

Source: CNBC