Facebook Bug Made Up to 14 Million Users’ Posts Public

Social media giant Facebook could be facing another privacy scandal. A glitch caused up to 14 million Facebook users to have their ‘private’ posts inadvertently set to ‘public’, the company revealed Thursday.

A Facebook user's post typically defaults to a preselected privacy setting. However, a bug that was active from May 18 to May 27 changed posts added on these days to automatically be public. In a statement to CNN, Facebook said that it began rolling out a fix on May 22 and changed every post made by affected users to private. The bug was fully corrected by May 27.

Erin Egan, Facebook's chief privacy officer, says the bug did not affect past posts. "Starting today we are letting everyone affected know and asking them to review any posts they made during that time," she said in a statement. "We'd like to apologize for this mistake," Egan said. "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," she added.

Users will see a message from Facebook urging them to "Please Review Your Posts" and a link to a list of what they shared on Facebook while the bug was active.

CNBC reported that the issue resulted from Facebook's efforts to allow users to highlight items on their profiles, such as photos, the company said. The featured items defaulted to public settings, which inadvertently made all posts by the user during the affected period also default to public.

A Facebook spokesperson told the CNN that sending out such notifications is the start of a new proactive and transparent way for the company to handle issues going forward.

The latest revelation by the social media company which had 2.19 billion users as of February this year comes on the heels of news that Facebook shared user data with device makers, including China's Huawei. The Cambridge Analytica scandal is still reverberating around the world which saw user data of up to 87 million Facebook users compromised.

This incident is a good reminder to check who can see your Facebook posts. To do so on desktop, go to Settings, then click on Privacy. The first option under Your Activity is Who can see your future posts? There, you can limit who can see your next status update.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Jun 08, 2018 05:57 AM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).