Facebook Privacy Bug Affects 14 Million Users

Another day, another Facebook Privacy bug.

Facebook has admitted today that 14 million users have been affected by a bug which saw their status updates being shared publicly rather than with their usual privacy settings.

The social network’s Chief Privacy Officer, Erin Egan, said:

“The bug occurred as we were building a new way to share featured items on your profile, like a photo. Since these featured items are public, the suggested audience for all new posts – not just these items – was set to public.”

He goes on to say that the bug has since been fixed. Users will see a notification when they next login allowing them to review the posts, if they were affected.

This is the latest blow to the social network. In March 2018 it was revealed that Facebook had provided personal data to Cambridge Analytica. Which then went onto use that data to support Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.

The press release ends with Egan acknowledging that this is just another hurdle in gaining back the trust from its users, saying, “We’ve heard loud and clear that we need to be more transparent about how we build our products and how these products use your data – including when things go wrong. And this is what we are doing here.”