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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

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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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