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Facebook Users Report Seeing Old Private Messages Showing Up On Timelines

techcrunch.com

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Re: Facebook Users Report Seeing Old Private Messages Showing Up On Timelines

#31

Post by randartie »

Haven't seen concrete evidence yet though...I went ahead and looked through some profiles and there's stuff that looks very revealing, as though it were a private incoming conversation but then every time I click on them, the convo box expands and I can see that people 'liked it', meaning it was public from the start.

Does anyone actually have real evidence? Maybe a screenshot of a message that CLEARLY is private and in no circumstance would they have forgot posting it on a wall THREE YEARS ago?

Re: Facebook Users Report Seeing Old Private Messages Showing Up On Timelines

#32

Post by zabar »

click170 wrote: post #11

Im surprised at Facebooks response, which is basically, "Your all crazy and there is no problem".

To me it looks that they were trying to buy some time. Trying to slow down the propagation of the story. But I think by now it's not fixed and it's obvious that it's very real, they will have to find something else...

Re: Facebook Users Report Seeing Old Private Messages Showing Up On Timelines

#33

Post by drbawb »

mwg66 wrote: post #24

I can confirm it too. Scary stuff. This is going to cause real world problems for a lot of people. I am done with Facebook now. Bye.

I see a few messages on my timeline; thankfully they are all _really_ unimportant. (One liners like "hey thanks again.", etc.)

In principal, though, this bug shakes me to the core. Had it chosen to sample posts from 2010+ rather than 2008-2009; hell, I could easily be out of a job, or be dealing with some very upset family members.

This is unacceptable; it violates any shred of trust I had left in Facebook as a platform.

I'm done, too.

Re: Facebook Users Report Seeing Old Private Messages Showing Up On Timelines

#34

Post by huzur79 »

click170 wrote: post #11

Im surprised at Facebooks response, which is basically, "Your all crazy and there is no problem".

Hum

http://techcrunch.com/2012/09/24/reports-facebook-users-seei...

"TechCrunch has investigated more, and we have found no evidence that the allegedly exposed posts were actually private messages. Their email receipts show they were in fact wall posts, and the posts do not appear in users’ Facebook Messages inbox.

Facebook also says in no uncertain terms that there is absolutely no privacy bug. What people are seeing are old Wall postings, not private messages. A spokesperson tells TechCrunch:

“Every report we’ve seen, we’ve gone back and checked. We haven’t seen one report that’s been confirmed [of a private message being exposed]. A lot of the confusion is because before 2009 there were no likes and no comments on wall posts. People went back and forth with wall posts instead of having a conversation [in the comments of single wall post.]

A small number of users raised concerns after what they mistakenly believed to be private messages appeared on their Timeline. Our engineers investigated these reports and found that the messages were older wall posts that had always been visible on the users’ profile pages. Facebook is satisfied that there has been no breach of user privacy.”"

This is why real reporters actually check into news stories first before publishing. I have yet to find a single shred of evidence anywhere that shows this has been verified and repeated. And I've been looking pretty hard for the last 30 minutes.

Re: Facebook Users Report Seeing Old Private Messages Showing Up On Timelines

#35

Post by palebluedot »

This seems to be anecdotally confirmed by multiple people here. To me, if true, this screams of a broken engineering culture inside Facebook, where the model for data privacy and security is secondary, not primary. If this is indeed verified, no one should ever use Facebook for anything truly private, regardless of what apologies or excuses are made.

It is difficult to think of something like this, where private emails are accidentally disclosed publicly en masse, happening with gmail (or any other email service).

Re: Facebook Users Report Seeing Old Private Messages Showing Up On Timelines

#36

Post by fidotron »

snippyhollow wrote: post #3
kennu wrote: post #2

So it's, again, people forgetting that they used to write wall-to-wall messages in 2009, and that they were always visible to friends?

Not at all, I can assure you I had my _private_ conversations disclosed.

Likewise.

Well, FB had kind of jumped the shark. I guess they wanted to leave no room for doubt about it.

Re: Facebook Users Report Seeing Old Private Messages Showing Up On Timelines

#37

Post by tisme »

huzur79 wrote: post #34
click170 wrote: post #11

Im surprised at Facebooks response, which is basically, "Your all crazy and there is no problem".

Hum http://techcrunch.com/2012/09/24/reports-facebook-users-seei... "TechCrunch has investigated more, and we have found no evidence that the allegedly exposed posts were actually private messages. Their email receipts show they were in fact wall posts, and the posts do not appear in users’ Facebook Messages inbox. Facebook also says in no uncertain terms that there is absolutely no privacy bug. What people are seein…

> And I've been looking pretty hard for the last 30 minutes.

You need not look so far, it's right here in this thread. People are confirming some of their private messages set to 'friends' only to be world visible on their timeline.

Re: Facebook Users Report Seeing Old Private Messages Showing Up On Timelines

#38

Post by AlexMuir »

If I could short FB I would do so immediately. The fallout from this is going to be immense and long-term. I'd imagine they are facing two choices at FB right now:

1. Take the site down and prevent any further leaks. But accept the absolutely massive flak that would come from that.

or

2. Continue to let the leaking happen and try to hotfix the bug. Be accused of failing to get a handle on it, but perhaps get away with it if fixed in the next 20 minutes.

I'd bet that it's been like this for ages and only just been noticed. That will make fixing it a bit harder I should think - not simply a rollback to the previous push.

Re: Facebook Users Report Seeing Old Private Messages Showing Up On Timelines

#39

Post by manifold »

seiji wrote: post #30
pilgrim689 wrote: post #27

Every time I hear of Facebook developer philosophies, it's always "Move Fast and Break Things."... Not with 800 million people's private conversations, please.

What can one do? They aren't a government entity -- you can't vote management out or change policies. They aren't regulated -- you have no complaint procedures or escalation mechanism. The best you can do is yell at them. They will gladly laugh at you through their young-and-rich-and-by-the-way-fu billionaire eyes. If they decide to make public every thing you've ever written in rolling 10 year intervals there is not…

The Data Protection Act 1998 would presumably apply in the UK and Ireland, and the EU has a data protection directive. My expectation would be that they could not disclose everything without consequence.

Re: Facebook Users Report Seeing Old Private Messages Showing Up On Timelines

#40

Post by wl »

dm8 wrote: post #23

Looks like FB have confirmed that these were old wall posts not the messages. Something is confusing.

I can confirm that messages meant only for me were public on my wall and I have found messages I only intended for others public on their walls. They were most definitely NOT wall posts.
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