Facebook has given a furr breakdown of data to US media. The error occurred from 18th to 27th of May and affected around 14 million users, as tech portals reported Recode and TechCrunch as well as or US media.
The glitch was about privacy settings for individual Facebook posts. Users can choose wher an entry should be public or only be seen by friends and acquaintances. The setting usually applies to all future posts as long as it is not actively changed. In this case, however, a software error caused new entries to be listed as public without warning by default. Affected users, who did not notice this, made ir entries visible to more people than wanted.
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The error was fixed by now, responsible Facebook manager Erin Egan shared with. “We want to apologize.” The company now wants to start to inform affected users.
For Facebook, which, according to Cambridge Analytica scandal, is already under pressure in terms of data protection and privacy, mishap is at an early age. “Obviously, it’s both a PR and a management disaster,” wrote influential tech blog Recode.
