These featured items are publicly visible, but Facebook inadvertently extended that setting to all new posts from those users.”

Considering that Facebook has nearly 2.2 billion users worldwide, the number of affected users is small. After Facebook employees discovered the bug, which occurred while the tech giant was testing a new feature, the company claimed workers went back and changed the privacy settings for all posts shared by those 14 million users during that time. Starting Thursday, Facebook started notifying the 14 million users affected by the bug that some of their private posts had been made public. In the status update box at the top of a user’s News Feed, he or she has the option to select who they would like to share their post with — “public,” “friends,” or “friends except for.” Even if a user had set their default sharing option to “friends,” the bug changed the setting for affected users to “public.” That means if an eagle-eyed user didn’t catch the bug, they likely shared some status updates publicly on Facebook that they meant to share only with friends. Facebook acknowledged Thursday a software glitch that changed the settings of some 14 million users, potentially making some posts public even if they were intended to be private. Erin Egan, Facebook’s chief privacy officer, said in a statement that the company recently “found a bug that automatically suggested posting publicly when some people were creating their Facebook posts.”

Facebook said this affected users posting between May 18 and May 27 as it was implementing a new way to share some items such as photos. “We have fixed this issue, and, starting today, we are letting everyone affected know and asking them to review any posts they made during that time,” Facebook Chief Privacy Officer Erin Egan said in the statement. To be clear, this bug did not impact anything people had posted before — and they could still choose their audience just as they always have.”

A Facebook spokesperson said the notification is the start of new proactive and transparent way for the company to handle issues going forward.
Facebook reports an error in privacy settings that has affected 14 million users.