Facebook Users Report Seeing Old Private Messages Showing Up On Timelines

Post by robk » Mon, Sep 24, 2012, 7:51 PM UTC

palebluedot wrote: post #35

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 ema…

Post by atestu » Mon, Sep 24, 2012, 7:52 PM UTC

palebluedot wrote: post #35

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 ema…

Post by jlgreco » Mon, Sep 24, 2012, 7:54 PM UTC

mnicole wrote: post #56

huzur79 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it is indeed verified I would be the first one to jump on the bandwaggon and delete the account and tell others to do so. But so far I have not seen anything to verify it and more reports on Facebook claims that it is indeed old user to user wall posts (something I remember and used in the past personally) just showing up from people now liking them which at the time they didn't have a like button.

Regardless of what the actual situation is, if these posts are being brought to people's attention by friends because they seem sensitive and are now more prominent than they once were, isn't that a concern in and of itself?

Post by RobAtticus » Mon, Sep 24, 2012, 7:55 PM UTC

tisme wrote: post #52

jwpeddle wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They aren't confirming anything. People are looking at wallposts and thinking/remembering they are private messages, but everyone that has tried to verify using email notifications has found only wallposts. Until someone shows that a verifiable private message showed up publicly, than there's no reason to continue spreading this. If it's a problem, it can easily be confirmed. Even Techcrunch, who criticised Facebook'…

"Same here, my wife just called me crying because a large number of very private conversations she had with friends in the past are now visible on her timeline." Sounds pretty clear to me, I figure that the lady knows which conversation were private and which weren't, if only by their content.

Post by jlgreco » Mon, Sep 24, 2012, 7:56 PM UTC

huzur79 wrote: post #62

huzur79 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Post a screen shot, lets see it.

Well its public now isn't it. Isn't that the problem. What harm would a screen shot do. Can black out anything that is sensitive.