Is Facebook safe? Private photos of 7 million users exposed! Here's what happened.

In a blog post, Facebook said the bug affected the Facebook users who used Facebook login for third-party apps and granted them permission to access their photos from facebook.

Is Facebook safe? Private photos of 7 million users exposed! Here's what happened.
Facebook said the bug affected the Facebook users who used Facebook login for third-party apps and granted them permission to access their photos from facebook, Image source: Reuters
By ZeeBiz WebTeam
Updated: Sun, Dec 16, 2018
01:15 pm
Mumbai, ZeeBiz WebDesk
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The year 2018 has not been so kind for Facebook as the world`s largest social media network has been grilled for its mishandling of user information. Facebook's reported involvement in a privacy scandal in March also put a question mark on the privacy policy of the company. Now again, the social media platform's privacy controls have broken down. It has been found to have been hit by a bug, or software flaw, affecting a large number of Facebook users. 

Reports say that close to seven million users may have been hit. The incident has once again put the spotlight on Facebook privacy policy.  

In a blog post, Facebook said the bug affected the Facebook users who used Facebook login for third-party apps and granted them permission to access their photos from facebook.

Facebook also said that it will give its users' notification about the possible exposure of their private photos, and are working with developers to delete those photos from impacted users. 

"Our internal team discovered a photo API bug that may have affected people who used Facebook Login and granted permission to third-party apps to access their photos. We have fixed the issue but, because of this bug, some third-party apps may have had access to a broader set of photos than usual for 12 days between September 13 to September 25, 2018," Facebook said. 

"When someone gives permission for an app to access their photos on Facebook, we usually only grant the app access to photos people share on their timeline. In this case, the bug potentially gave developers access to other photos, such as those shared on Marketplace or Facebook Stories," it added.

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The bug also impacted photos that people uploaded to Facebook but chose not to post. 

"Currently, we believe this may have affected up to 6.8 million users and up to 1,500 apps built by 876 developers. The only apps affected by this bug were ones that Facebook approved to access the photos API and that individuals had authorized to access their photos," said.