Facebook announced, social network has mistakenly exposed private photos of millions of users without their permission.According to reports, a bug on facebook allowed third-party app developers to access photos of 6.8 million users who may not have shared their photos publicly.
Facebook discovered that its users’ photos were exposed over a 12 day period in September 2018. Facebook has been investigating the issue to understand its impact to ensure that they have contacted the right developers and the people affected by this bug.Ankush Johar, Director at Infosec Ventures, a venture fund that invests in innovative cyber security platforms that solve big problems, commented,
“Humans are the weakest link in cyber security, and privacy is an urban legend today. This has been proven time after time. The security of a user’s data lies in their own control and the only way to be secure is to be vigilant and suspicious by nature. Be your own HumanFirewall! Users are suggested not to provide any permission to ‘silly’ Facebook Apps that provide no utility and immediately take corrective action by retracting permission from needless apps. This can be done via the ‘security and privacy settings’ on the Facebook App or Website.
In this specific instance, only those users may have been affected who gave access to third party facebook apps that had access to their photos, but as seen in past facebook hacks, hackers are easily able to develop fake apps like “Quiz Apps” and “What Celebrity You Look Like Apps” for example, that appear to need genuine reasons to access photos, friend lists etc but in the background they steal information of users.”
