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Facebook Bug Let Apps Access Unposted Photos for Millions of Users

posted by Fnord666 on Thursday December 20 2018, @12:31AM   Printer-friendly
from the it's-not-a-bug-it's-a-feature dept.

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for SoyCow1984

Facebook has disclosed yet another privacy flub. This time around, it says a bug in the Photo API led to third-party apps being able to access not only timeline photos (which users had permitted them to do), but Stories, Marketplace images and photos people uploaded to Facebook but never actually shared.

"For example, if someone uploads a photo to Facebook but doesn't finish posting it -- maybe because they've lost reception or walked into a meeting -- we store a copy of that photo so the person has it when they come back to the app to complete their post," Engineering Director Tomer Bar explained in a post.

The bug affected as many as 6.8 million people across up to 1,500 apps, Facebook says, and it was active for 12 days before it was detected and fixed on September 25th. Companies are supposed to disclose data breaches within 72 hours under EU General Data Protection Regulation rules, though Facebook told TechCrunch it needed some time to investigate the bug's impact and prepare a notice for affected users in various languages. Still, the delay could land Facebook in hot water with EU regulators.

Source: https://www.engadget.com/2018/12/14/facebook-privacy-bug-photos-timeline-stories-marketplace/

Related: Facebook Keeps Unposted Videos

Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday December 20 2018, @04:39AM (3 children)

    by takyon (881) <takyonNO@SPAMsoylentnews.org> on Thursday December 20 2018, @04:39AM (#776683) Journal

    Oh, is that the scandal I was hearing about on CBSN earlier?

    It's becoming hard to track these Facebook scandals. Especially when we are at a 1 scandal per 3 days pace.

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  • (Score: 2) by edIII on Thursday December 20 2018, @05:46AM (1 child)

    by edIII (791) on Thursday December 20 2018, @05:46AM (#776704)

    The one you allude to is HUGE. Basically Facebook has argued to US regulators that no privacy was breached, because users had given consent. That consent being to "integrated partners, affiliates, sisters-cousins-friends-roommate, etc.". They argued that this partners were "effectively extensions of Facebook itself, and therefore legal". The depth and breadth of what was being accessed was fucking staggering. Banks having the ability to both see and AUTHOR private messages on the person's behalf.

    In other words, a FB user never had any privacy at all.

    I'm. Just. Shocked. It's shocking that a major tech company, that is essentially a glorified marketer and the defacto leader of Big Ad, would performing activities in furtherance of corporate profits with complete disregard for consumer privacy.

    Who could've seen that coming?

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    • (Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday December 20 2018, @06:00AM

      by takyon (881) <takyonNO@SPAMsoylentnews.org> on Thursday December 20 2018, @06:00AM (#776711) Journal

      the defacto leader of Big Ad

      https://www.investopedia.com/news/facebook-google-digital-ad-market-share-drops-amazon-climbs/ [investopedia.com]

      Alphabet Inc.’s (GOOGL) Google and Facebook Inc.’s (FB) dominance of the U.S. digital advertising market is slowly beginning to unravel.

      eMarketer forecasts that the combined U.S. digital ad market share of the two tech giants will fall for the first time in 2018, shrinking 1.7 percentage points to 56.8%. The research firm blamed this anticipated decline in a year when digital ad spending in the country is expected to grow nearly 19% to $107 billion on rising competition from smaller rivals such as Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN) and Snap Inc. (SNAP).

      [...] According to eMarketer’s forecasts, Google’s U.S. revenues from digital advertising is predicted to jump about 15% to $39.92 billion in 2018, while Facebook’s ad turnover, led by a stellar performance from Instagram, is expected to climb 17% to $21 billion.

      Those projections give Google and Facebook command of 37.2% and 19.6% of the market, respectively, down from 38.6% and 19.9% the prior year. This represents the first time that eMarketer has forecasted a decline for Facebook. Google’s market share contracted for the first time in 2016.

      At best it's a co-leader. At worst, you can call it half of GOOG.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 20 2018, @07:29AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 20 2018, @07:29AM (#776726)

    It's kinda fun to watch Facebook being MySpaced by the media. Zuckerberg looks like he aged a lot recently.