Facebook bug exposes private photos, even Zuckerberg not immune

by Leigh Goessl (Guest contributor/Digital Journalist)

A new Facebook bug exposed private photos to public eyes, and it turns out not even company CEO Mark Zuckerberg is immune to the network’s glitches that impact user privacy.

The flaw was first exposed by a body building forum which included a post that provided details on the glitch. Users had discovered the anomaly through using Facebook’s report abuse tool, reported Zack Whittaker on ZDNet.

The ‘Report abuse’ tools in Facebook allowed any user to view personal, private and other hidden photos that users expected would be unseen to anyone except those designated in privacy settings. Facebook had recently released a feature that allowed users to select numerous photos to report, and this is where the flaw emerged.

According to ZDNet, here’s how the glitch worked:

“Users are able to report “inappropriate profile photos” on a user’s profile. By checking the box ”nudity or pornography,” the user is granted an opportunity to help Facebook “take action by selecting additional photos to include with your report.” Facebook will then display a number of additional photos that are not otherwise publicly available to the user.”

Basically, in order to exploit the glitch, a Facebook user would have to be in the midst of reporting another Facebook member’s photos for abuse. Additionally, the individuals affected would have no idea his or her photos were exposed for viewing.

Reportedly Facebook is on top of the bug and has removed the feature for now.

Facebook released a statement which said, “The bug allowed anyone to view a limited number of another user’s most recently uploaded photos irrespective of the privacy settings for these photos.” This was the result of one of our recent code pushes and was live for a limited period of time. Upon discovering the bug, we immediately disabled the system, and will only return functionality once we can confirm the bug has been fixed.”

Back in 2010 Zuckerberg said the age of privacy was over, and now even for the social network’s CEO that seems to be the case, now that it appears even Zuckerberg has become a victim of his own network’s glitches.

This flaw appeared to have affected all members, including Zuckerberg. After Facebook took action, private photos can no longer be exploited, however the feature wasn’t disabled in time to prevent Zuckerberg’s private photos from being seen; a whole slew of personal photos kept hidden from public view by Zuckerberg were posted online on a blog site.

This latest glitch is not the first time the private content of users has been exposed through a network glitch.Just last week Facebook settled charges with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) over privacy issues.

This article originally appeared on Digital Journal [Link]

Photo courtesy of Flickr user Bryan Thatcher