Rumors of a Facebook bug has users from all over the world
worried about private messages showing up very publicly on Timeline pages. But
the social network is debunking those claims, saying these messages are
actually just older wall posts.
A series of reports coming out of France — including ones
fromMetro France and Le Nouvel Observateur — claim that Facebook members who
sent private messages over the past few years have been popping up on public
posts.
Some members in the U.S. have said their private messages
from 2007 and 2008 are showing up on their Timeline, but Facebook told Mashable
that the company hasn't found a bug and believes the discrepancy comes from a
wider roll out of the newer Timeline layout on a global scale.
Facebook says that if you can comment or Like that activity,
then it is a wall post and not a private message. In the past, users weren't
able to comment and Like posts, so Facebook believes members new to Timeline
are confusing old posts for private messages.
"A small number of users raised concerns after what
they mistakenly believed to be private messages appeared on their
Timeline," Fred Wolens of Facebook Policy Communications said in a
statement. "Our engineers investigated these reports and found that the
messages were older wall posts that had always been visible on the users'
profile pages. Facebook is satisfied that there has been no breach of user
privacy."
UPDATE: When asked if such a bug were possible, Wolens
responded: "While not quite a technical impossibility, these systems are
run on two separate backends which would require a non-trivial amount of work
for this bug to be real."
We have been unable to confirm any case where private
information has been leaked.
For those worried that they may be subject to a bug, users
can set all wall posts to only friends or just to themselves, and also hide the
activity.
Source: Samantha Murphy
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