Facebook apologizes for bug that may have exposed photos of 6.8 million people

French President Emmanuel Macron arrived in Strasbourg on Friday evening, one day after the suspect in a recent attack near the city’s famous Christmas market was shot dead in a police operation. (Dec. 14)AP

Facebook is having to apologize — again. This time, it is for a bug the social network disclosed on Friday that may have affected up to 6.8 million people who used a Facebook login and gave permission to third-party apps to access their photos.

Facebook says the bug has been fixed but indicated some third-party apps “may have had access to a broader set of photos than usual” spanning the 12-day period between Sept. 13 and Sept. 25.

“We’re sorry this happened,” Facebook wrote in a blog post aimed at developers. “Early next week we will be rolling out tools for app developers that will allow them to determine which people using their app might be impacted by this bug. We will be working with those developers to delete the photos from impacted users.”

The way Facebook explains it, when you give permission for an app to access your photos on Facebook, the app is granted access only to photos you share on your Facebook Timeline. In this case, however, the bug potentially gave developers access to other photos, including those you may have shared in Marketplace or Facebook Stories.

The bug also included photos that you may have uploaded to Facebook but chose not to post. Facebook stores a copy of such photos so you can access them when you return to the app should you want to post them then.

Facebook says that up to 1,500 apps built by 876 developers may have been affected.

What you should do?

The company plans to alert people who have potentially been affected. You’ll be directed to a Help Center link to see if you’ve used any of the apps involved.

Facebook also recommends that you log into any apps to which you’ve shared Facebook photos, to check which photos the apps have access to. According to the company, none of this has to do with your privacy settings.

The episode is merely the latest in a long string of embarrassing privacy and security snafus that badly damaged the social network’s reputation over the past year. Facebook recently said that 30 million people had their accounts breached by hackers who made off with phone numbers, email addresses, search data, location history, and other potentially sensitive data. Though that sum was a revision down from the 50 million accounts originally reported, it still represents a huge security rupture for the company.

And that disclosure came on top of the earlier revelation that up to 87 million people, may have had their data improperly shared by political targeting firm Cambridge Analytica.