Facebook Exposed 6.8 million users’ photos without their permission

Facebook has admitted that a bug recently exposed private pictures of over 6.8 million users without their permission.  The bug allowed third-party app developers to access the pictures of Facebook users that they had not shared publicly. According to Facebook, around 6.8 million users would have been affected due to this bug.

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The body that manages the Facebook compliance with European rules and regulations, Irish Data Protection Commission said that a “statutory inquiry” has been started on the multiple breaches that Facebook has admitted to. Tomer Bar, an engineering director at Facebook said that those pictures that were uploaded on Facebook but not posted might have beenaccessed. Also images that are uploaded on Facebook Stories are also accessed.

He added, “We’re sorry this happened.”

The photos were exposed in a 12 day period during September. The Facebook spokesperson was asked why the company waited so long to inform the public about this bug. To this, the spokesperson replied,  “We have been investigating the issue since it was discovered to try and understand its impact so that we could ensure we are contacting the right developers and people affected by the bug. It then took us some time to build a meaningful way to notify people, and get translations done.”