Photos and videos are a big part of the experience on Facebook. And the tech giant said earlier today that a “bug” in September may have exposed people’s photos to third-party apps. Apps they hadn’t given permission to.
The time period in question was from September 13 to September 25 of this year.
“When someone gives permission for an app to access their photos on Facebook, we usually only grant the app access to photos people share on their timeline,” the news release from Facebook says.
But the bug in the Facebook program gave apps access to other photos – “such as those shared on Marketplace or Facebook Stories”.
Facebook says the bug may have affected up to 6.8 million users and 1,500 apps.
The social media giant plans to alert people who may have been affected by sending them a notification through the platform. Then you’ll be able to see if you’ve used any apps that were affected.
The news of this breach – nearly three months after it happened – also opened a lot of criticism for Facebook. On May 25th, the European Union’s GDPR rules went into effect. GDPR stands for “General Data Protection Regulation” and it requires businesses to alert people of a data breach within 72 hours of learning about the breach.
The news release from Facebook does not state when they discovered the September breach.
