Source: wxyz.com
New York (CNN Business)Facebook
announced on Friday that the social network had exposed the private
photos of millions of users without their permission.
The
company said a 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.
The
Irish Data Protection Commission, the body that oversees Facebook's
compliance with European regulations, said on Friday that it had
launched a "statutory inquiry" into Facebook as a result of multiple
breaches the company had informed them about this year.
Photos
that users started to upload to Facebook but did not post could have
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 added.
Users' photos were exposed over a 12 day period in September, the blog post said.
When
asked why Facebook waited to inform the public of the issue, a Facebook
spokesperson told CNN Business, "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."
The
information Facebook gives to third-party app developers continues to
be under scrutiny. Earlier this year, a data scientist working for Cambridge Analytica revealed the company had several years ago used the system to gather data on tens of millions of Americans.
As a result of this bug, the company said it believes the photos could have been accessed by 1,500 apps built by 876 developers.
Facebook said it will notify people potentially impacted by the bug.
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