Facebook Bug Switched Millions of Privacy Settings to `Public'

(Bloomberg) -- Facebook Inc. had a software bug for 10 days in May that set the audience for people’s posts to “public,” even if they had intended to share them just with friends, or a smaller audience.

The bug affected as many as 14 million people, the company said. Facebook will soon start individually informing the people who were affected by the bug.

“We’d like to apologize for this mistake,” Erin Egan, Facebook’s chief privacy officer, said in a statement. Facebook has fixed the privacy settings for posts during that time, and will let users review any affected content to make sure the audience is what they wanted, she said.

It’s the latest in a series of revelations about Facebook’s privacy lapses. The company is currently facing criticism from Congress for data partnerships with Chinese companies. Facebook is also still dealing with fallout from a March revelation that Cambridge Analytica, a political consulting firm, was able to obtain information on as many as 87 million people without their consent.

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