Once again, Facebook is at the root of an issue regarding security. This time around it was a bug that affected almost seven million people.
According to CBC, a software error gave unauthorized access to people’s photos to hundreds of apps. It also included images that may have been uploaded but not posted just yet.
It’s not known if anyone was capable of seeing the images, but it does seem to have occurred in September 2018 since Facebook mentioned that users could have had their images exposed during the month for twelve days. The social media company also didn’t say how many users were affected in Europe, where strict social media policies are in place, despite that, they did notify the Irish Data Protection Commission of the breach in security.
What this shows is a bigger issue on the platform. It’s not the first time that people’s security has been exposed. In June, there was yet another bug. In that case, it led to people posting publicly, even if they had their privacy settings stating otherwise. It was also said to have affected 14 million users during May, right before it was apparently discovered.
Despite that, this is something that should be expected since Facebook is, in fact, one of the largest social media platforms out there with around 2.27 billion users. This proves that it is increasingly difficult to manage security for everyone, especially since some users might not take security as an important part of their experience on the internet. On top of all that, there’s the possibility of the site being a hotbed for attacks from hackers. Since it’s a large site, that’s had issues in the past, it could be seen as the perfect target due to there being so many people on it. So, in short, an attack has the chance to lead to some level of basic success.
All in all, Facebook has got to solve these issues quickly and learn how to prevent them in the future. No one wants their private photos leaked to strangers.
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