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Facebook says a bug opened access to users’ private photos

In this May 1, 2018, file photo, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg makes the keynote speech at F8, Facebook's developer conference in San Jose, Calif. The British Parliament has released some 250 pages worth of documents that show Facebook considered charging developers for data access. The documents show internal discussions about linking data to revenue. "There's a big question on where we get the revenue from," Zuckerberg said in one email. "Do we make it easy for devs to use our payments/ad network but not require them? Do we require them? Do we just charge a rev share directly and let devs who use them get a credit against what they owe us? It's not at all clear to me here that we have a model that will actually make us the revenue we want at scale." (AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez, File)
In this May 1, 2018, file photo, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg makes the keynote speech at F8, Facebook's developer conference in San Jose, Calif. The British Parliament has released some 250 pages worth of documents that show Facebook considered charging developers for data access. The documents show internal discussions about linking data to revenue. "There's a big question on where we get the revenue from," Zuckerberg said in one email. "Do we make it easy for devs to use our payments/ad network but not require them? Do we require them? Do we just charge a rev share directly and let devs who use them get a credit against what they owe us? It's not at all clear to me here that we have a model that will actually make us the revenue we want at scale." (AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez, File) In this May 1, 2018, file photo, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg makes the keynote speech at F8, Facebook's developer conference in San Jose, Calif. The British Parliament has released some 250 pages worth of documents that show Facebook considered charging developers for data access. The documents show internal discussions about linking data to revenue. "There's a big question on where we get the revenue from," Zuckerberg said in one email. "Do we make it easy for devs to use our payments/ad network but not require them? Do we require them? Do we just charge a rev share directly and let devs who use them get a credit against what they owe us? It's not at all clear to me here that we have a model that will actually make us the revenue we want at scale." (AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez, File)

By Mike Isaac and Natasha Singer/New York Times News Service 4 min read

SAN FRANCISCO – Facebook announced Friday that it had discovered a bug that allowed outsiders access to private photos, potentially affecting some 6.8 million people who use the service.

“We have fixed the issue but, because of this bug, some third-party apps may have had access to a broader set of photos than usual,” Tomer Bar, an engineering director at the company, said in a blog post.

The announcement is the latest in a string of problems the social network has had with consumer data. In March, The New York Times reported that Cambridge Analytica, a third-party firm, harvested the data of Facebook users without their express knowledge or consent. And in September, a separate, more serious breach gave hackers full access to the Facebook accounts of tens of millions of users.

This most recent incident is somewhat less severe than previous ones. Around 1,500 third-party apps had access to users’ uploaded photos – even if they had not posted them publicly to Facebook – from Sept. 13 to Sept. 25.

Facebook said that the number of people affected was probably smaller than 6.8 million, because it doubted that all 1,500 apps gained access to the social network during that 12-day period. The company said it was contacting the 876 developers who built the apps and asking them to check and delete any photos they may have retrieved improperly.