Facebook says bug may have briefly exposed photos of 6.8 million app users
Between Sept. 13 and Sept. 25, a bug temporarily exposed more photos than intended to third-party apps that use Facebook logins, the social network acknowledged on Friday.
Facebook's headquarters roadsign
As many as 6.8 million people and 1,500 apps may have been impacted, Facebook said. Some of the leaked photos came not just from regular posts, but ones in Stories or that were uploaded but never shared.
Facebook discovered the problem on Sept. 25, the company told TechCrunch. It didn't say why it waited until now to reveal the issue, but late September also saw Facebook dealing with a security breach affecting nearly 50 million people, potentially letting hackers hijack profiles.
Anyone subject to the photo issue should receive a notification from Facebook, which is further promising to work with app developers to delete any photos they weren't supposed to have.
The latest developments only compound Facebook's problems during 2018, led by the Cambridge Analytica scandal. Analytica and Cambridge University researcher Aleksandr Kogan used a quiz app to collect data on Facebook users and their connected friends, the latter without consent, enabling Analytica to build voter profiles for some 71 million Americans and a smaller amount of people overseas. Facebook discovered the data harvesting in 2015, but only made it public in March 2018. This drew the scrutiny of governments in the U.S. and U.K.
Some clients of Cambridge Analytica -- now defunct -- included the Presidential campaigns for Donald Trump and Ted Cruz, and the Institutional Revolutionary Party during Mexico's 2018 general election.
Facebook's headquarters roadsign
As many as 6.8 million people and 1,500 apps may have been impacted, Facebook said. Some of the leaked photos came not just from regular posts, but ones in Stories or that were uploaded but never shared.
Facebook discovered the problem on Sept. 25, the company told TechCrunch. It didn't say why it waited until now to reveal the issue, but late September also saw Facebook dealing with a security breach affecting nearly 50 million people, potentially letting hackers hijack profiles.
Anyone subject to the photo issue should receive a notification from Facebook, which is further promising to work with app developers to delete any photos they weren't supposed to have.
The latest developments only compound Facebook's problems during 2018, led by the Cambridge Analytica scandal. Analytica and Cambridge University researcher Aleksandr Kogan used a quiz app to collect data on Facebook users and their connected friends, the latter without consent, enabling Analytica to build voter profiles for some 71 million Americans and a smaller amount of people overseas. Facebook discovered the data harvesting in 2015, but only made it public in March 2018. This drew the scrutiny of governments in the U.S. and U.K.
Some clients of Cambridge Analytica -- now defunct -- included the Presidential campaigns for Donald Trump and Ted Cruz, and the Institutional Revolutionary Party during Mexico's 2018 general election.
Comments
95% of my feed is two groups I follow. Everything and everyone else is unfollowed or blocked. Even family.
However, I use safari, not an app. Am I safe? Or am I screwed?
what a business model!
Also in Wired magazine this month is an article describing how What’sApp was involved in the mob beating death of five men.
Fixed that for you.
these “breaches” are a non-issue, but people just LOVE to make them seem bigger than they really are.
It seems shortsighted to just give Facebook a pass on even relatively benign data breaches/leaks.
It can be said that someone could do this on a website as well, but the reach of Facebook and how it becomes visible to others in their feed and such makes it unique.
There are a number of very annoying things these days. If I search for a gift for my wife on amazon, my search results show up not only in my FB news feed, but hers, and across different devices. Even if I have logged out of FB, cleared settings in safari, and so forth. It also shows up from searches I’ve done in our mac. Browser extensions and other items harvest what I search and share in that manner.
Most alarming is that we’ve had verbal conversations as a couple, with no search done and no postings about it, that I have seen items show up in my feed that relate to it. Coincidence? Perhaps. Still, creepy.
https://www.trustedreviews.com/news/how-to-delete-facebook-account-2950145
There is a deactivate process and a delete process further down.