Greg's Corner

Facebook bug only exposes 800,000 accounts this time

I’m running out of analogies for Facebook’s porous way it retains our private information. I’ve referred to their privacy practices as a sieve and a submarine with a screen door. I guess now I could refer to Facebook as a butterfly net with holes in it as a new bug has compromised the privacy of some 800,000 accounts.

According to Facebook, If you have blocked someone on Facebook but posted something that was shared beyond friends, such as a post marked public, the blocked person could see your posts. This bug, as Facebook is calling it, is said to have affected around 800,000 users between May 29th and June 5th. This is not to be confused with Facebook’s last faux pas that changed the privacy settings of 14 million users. While 800,000 may not seem like a lot of people compared to Facebook’s supposed 2 billion users, it’s still just a little bit more than the entire population of the U.S. state of North Dakota, or just a little less than the population of San Francisco.

So, if I had to make a new analogy about Facebook I guess I would compare them to a leaky kitchen faucet. You know the one I’m talking about. It was really bad at first, but you did some home repairs at first to stop most of the leaking. However, it’s still dripping but you never get around to calling a professional to fix it completely. Facebook needs a plumber to fix its leaks before the Federal Government acting as the housing inspector condemns the whole house.