Facebook did it again .
Adding to the social web ’s ever - farm list ofprivacy controversies , Facebook says a hemipterous insect may have expose the photos of up to 6.8 million of its drug user during a 12 - Clarence Day full stop in September . During that time , the company says , third - party apps may have had approach to more users ’ exposure than they were meant to , including pics that may have been uploaded to Facebook but never post .
“ When someone give permission for an app to access their picture on Facebook , we normally only grant the app access to photos people share on their timeline , ” Facebook Engineering Director Tomer Bar wrote in ablog post to developerson Friday . “ In this case , the hemipterous insect potentially gave developer access to other photograph , such as those partake on Marketplace or Facebook Stories . The hemipteran also impact photos that the great unwashed upload to Facebook but chose not to brand . For example , if someone upload a photo to Facebook but does n’t finish posting it — maybe because they ’ve suffer reception or walked into a meeting — we stash away a transcript of that photo so the person has it when they come back to the app to complete their post . ”
Facebook told Gizmodo in an email that the incident resulted from an error in a codification update to the photograph API between September 13 and September 25 , adding that it find and set the hemipteron on September 25 . Facebook did not yet comment on whether croak Facebook Stories photo were exposed , though it did intend that no photos apportion in Messenger were affect . ( We ’ll update when they get back to us on the history affair . ) In a note in itsHelp Center , the company suggest user to log into apps with license to view their Facebook photos to see which photos those apps had access to .
A Facebook spokesperson read it is contacting user who may have been dissemble by the bug . It is also reaching out to the 876 developers of 1,500 apps that may have had broader memory access to user photos to require them to check for and erase any such image — a tested and unfeigned method that hasgone over spectacularlyfor the companionship in the past .
Facebook aver that despite read of the bug in September , we are only just learning of this most recent incident because an investigating into who it affected on both the end user and developer side was on-going . But regardless of when they divulged this witching bit of info , the caller ca n’t keep from tot it to thepileofinnumerablebugsandprivacyissuesthat have come to light during itsYear From Hell .
“ We have been enquire the issue since it was discovered to test and empathise its wallop so that we could ensure we are contacting the right developers and people affected by the bug , ” a voice read in a assertion by email . “ It then consider us some fourth dimension to work up a meaningful style to apprise people , and get translation done . ”
Uh huh .
[ FacebookviaReuters ]
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