Facebook Bug Exposes 6.8 Million Users' Photos

Facebook continues to face criticism of the information they share with third-party app developers.

• By Sydny Shepard
• Dec 17, 2018

Facebook announced Friday that the social network had exposed the private photos of millions of users without their permission. The company said the bug recently allowed third-party app developers to access photos people may not have shared publicly. 

Facebook believes as many as 6.8 million users could be affected. 

Photos that users started to upload to Facebook but did not finish posting could ave been accessed along with images posted to Facebook Stories, Tomer Bar, an engineering director at Facebook, wrote in a blog post. 

"We're sorry this happened," he said in the blog post.

The photos were exposed over a 12 day period in September and as a result of the bug, the company believes the photos could have been accessed by 1,500 apps built by 876 developers. Facebook said it will notify people potentially impeached by the bug.

The information Facebook gives to third-party app developers continues to be under scrutiny. Earlier this year, a data scientist working for Cambridge Analytics revealed the company had several years ago used the system to gather data on tens of millions of Americans.