Facebook Unveils Bug Exposed up to 6.8 million user’s unposted photos

Last updated: July 5, 2023 Reading time: 3 minutes
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The bug permits 1,500 apps built by 876 developers to view user’s unposted photo which gets stored as drafts.

On Friday Facebook revealed that there is a bug in its platform which enables the third-party apps to get easy access to unpublished photos of 6.8 million users.

Facebook keeps the copies of photo drafts. Thus, if anyone uploads a photo but it does not finish posting it then the picture will get stored in face book’s catalog. The bug found in Facebook’s platform gave the third-party apps easy access towards these drafted photos.

The social-media company in one of their statements said that they had found the bug in a photo Application Program Interface (API). The virus troubled and afflicted the platform for 12 days. It plagued Facebook from September 13th to September 25th. Although the virus gets fixed now, it has given the ‘’access to third-party apps to a wider set of photos than it used to give.’’ Facebook said.

But Facebook typically allows apps with permissions to get access to photos which people can share on their timeline. Tom Bar, an engineering director at Facebook, in a post on Friday said; ‘’ In this case, the bug potentially gave developers access to other photos, such as those shared on Marketplace or Facebook Stories. The bug also impacted photos which people upload on Facebook but choose not to post.’’