Facebook blunder last month made millions of users’ private posts public

Facebook said Thursday that a software bug made some private posts public for as many as 14 million users over several days in May.

The problem, which Facebook said it has fixed, is the latest privacy scandal for the world’s largest social media company.

It said the bug automatically suggested that users make new posts public, even if they had previously restricted posts to “friends only” or another private setting. If users did not notice the new default suggestion, they unwittingly sent their post to a broader audience than they had intended.

Erin Egan, Facebook’s chief privacy officer, said the bug did not affect past posts. Facebook is notifying users who were affected and posted publicly during the time the bug was active, advising them to review their posts.

 

The news follows recent furore over Facebook’s sharing of user data with device makers, including China’s Huawei. The company is also still recovering from the Cambridge Analytica scandal, in which a Trump-affiliated data-mining firm got access to the personal data of as many as 87 million Facebook users.