Still reeling from the effects of its massive data privacy faux pas, Facebook has admitted that a new bug could have affected as many as 14-million users.
Chief privacy officer Erin Egan reveals that a bug automatically suggested posting publicly when some people were creating their Facebook posts.
“We’ve started letting the 14 million people 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.”
Whenever a user shares something on Facebook, they are shown an audience selector so they can decide who gets to see the post. The suggestions are based on the people they shared with last time they posted.
The bug set the selection for all new items to public, regardless of what the setting was before. “The problem has been fixed, and for anyone affected, we changed the audience back to what they’d been using before,” Egan sys.
“Out of an abundance of caution we are letting anyone affected know today and asking them to review Facebook posts they made during that time.”