Facebook issues apology for privacy glitch affecting 14 million users

14 million people are thought to have been affected.

Facebook has issued an apology after another glitch - this time, involving users' privacy settings. The bug meant that some people who had selected their posts to be viewed privately or by friends only actually had them shared publicly. It is thought to have affected 14 million people. Erin Egan, Facebook's privacy chief, wrote an apology post on Facebook's official blog to explain what happened. She explained:

"We recently found a bug that automatically suggested posting publicly when some people were creating their Facebook posts. "Today [Thursday, June 7] we started letting the 14 million people affected know – and asking them to review any posts they made during that time.

"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. "This bug occurred as we were building a new way to share featured items on your profile, like a photo. "Since these featured items are public, the suggested audience for all new posts – not just these items – was set to public. "The problem has been fixed, and for anyone affected, we changed the audience back to what they’d been using before."

According to Engadget, the bug became active on May 18.

However, while Facebook started rolling out a fix on May 22, it took until around May 27 for everyone's status settings to be normal again. The Facebook blog post explains act the big occurred while they were trying to create a new way to "share featured items on your profile, like a photo." Anyone who is affected by the glitch will be asked to review the Facebook posts they made during that time period. It explains:

"If you posted publicly, you’ll see a notification when you log in that leads to a page with more information – including a review of posts during this period."