Facebook Exposed 6.8 Million Users' Photos to Cap Off a Terrible 2018
For nearly two weeks in September, a bug let third-party developers view the photos of up to 6.8 million Facebook users, whether theyd shared them or not.
Facebook will eventually alert affected users with a notification, which will send them to a page that details what happened and which apps might have their photos on hand.
If the latter sounds familiar, its the same day Facebook discovered that hackers had compromised the accounts of 30 million users.
Which means two things: September 25 was a terrible day to be a Facebook security engineer, and there are legitimate questions over whether Facebook could be in trouble with European regulators.
Europes General Data Protection Regulation, which went into effect earlier this year, gives companies 72 hours to notify the authorities of a breach.
Facebook argues that it needed that time to investigate whether the incident qualified as a breach under GDPR in the first place, and that it told the appropriate authorities within 72 hours of making that determination.
The company says it will roll out tools for app developers early next week to help them determine which of their users might have been affected, and it will further help with the deletion of any photos that they have inappropriate access to. Its unclear if, beyond that sort of personal audit, Facebook can guarantee that every developer will delete every unauthorized photo.
Since then, hardly a month has gone by without some new revelation about how Facebook mishandled user data or failed to stop the spread of fake news or targeted George Soros for opposition research.
But perhaps thats the most damning news for Facebook of all: It exposed nearly 7 million peoples private photos, and its barely a blip on its year in review.
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