Facebook says its dealing with another security glitch.
The social media giant announced today that there was a bug that might've given a third-party access to your private photos back in September. We talked with an expert to see what this means, and how to tighten up your own security in the future.
When you upload a picture to Facebook, you're putting it out there for your friends to see! It’s social media after all, and you're on it to share special moments with those you care about!
But in this case, Facebook says a bug might've allowed third-party applications to access your photos you might not have shared publicly, and the company believes this has affected 6.8 million users.
Tech expert Kent Meeker explains how it likely happened.
“A lot of us don't have great Internet connectivity sometimes, you may be out and about, and you might post a picture of something, and there you'll be, uploading something and it stops about halfway through,” he said.
In other words, there are likely times you've uploaded a pic on your phone, but it didn't post. It’s at that point he says Facebook believes, there was a security bug, essentially letting developers into your camera roll on your phone.
“That's where they're saying that the breach occurred, or where the error occurred, it was in the actual kernel when the phone was actually sending it out, it broke there, and it didn't get the full response and somehow that led to this crazy vulnerability where it's able to get into pictures that are inside of the phone that have been sent,” Meeker said.
Facebook has yet to alert people affected. Meantime, Meeker has an easy way to protect your camera roll in the future: go in to settings - and cut off access. It might be a hassle if you're a frequent poster, but Meeker says, it helps.
Other ways to keep from being vulnerable: change that password, often, and as a rule of thumb, don't post anything you wouldn't want public.
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