Facebook says more than 800,000 users may have been affected by a bug that unblocked people they previously had blocked.
Writing in a blog post, Erin Egan, the company’s chief privacy officer, said the bug was active between May 29th and June 5th. It did not re-establish friend connections between any of the affected users and the blocked individuals, Egan says, but it did allow those previously blocked users to see posts shared to a wider audience, like photos shared with friends of friends. Content shared with the friends-only preference would not have been accessible to the unblocked person.
The bug affected up to 800,000 users and has since been fixed, the company said. But it’s yet another privacy misstep for the social media company, which has been owning up to its errors with increasing frequency in recent months.
While 800,000 people is just a tiny fraction of the 2.2 billion Facebook user base, that is still a sizable number of affected users who may have been subject to concerning episodes, ranging from misunderstandings and awkward exchanges to feelings of anxiety and panic. Egan is careful to point out that blocking isn’t just for exes or people whose posts are “annoying,” as she writes, but to prevent harassment, bullying, and other more insidious forms of online interaction.
In most cases, the bug only unblocked one person on a user’s blocked list, Facebook said. Affected users will see a Facebook notification encouraging them to check their blocked lists.
It’s the second software bug in less than a month that the company has notified users about. In June, Facebook disclosed that a software bug led some users to post publicly by default regardless of their previous settings. That bug affected as many as 14 million users over several days in May. For those who concern about their privacy, its time to rethink…
Last updated:
0 Comments