Facebook and its privacy issues… In the latest news from Menlo Park, it appears that the social networking giant managed to send developer analytics reports to outsiders. After a developer reported (via TechCrunch) that someone outside of their company had received their Facebook App Analytics weekly summary email that contains confidential business information, it took Facebook 43 hours before it could confirm that the company did indeed send analytics to outsiders.
It wasn’t just a single app.
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Facebook has said that roughly 3 percent of all apps on Facebook Analytics had their weekly summary information leaked to testers instead of just developers and analysts. Since testers are often people outside of a company, developers were obviously worried as these reports carry confidential business information, including the number of new users, weekly active users, and page views. TechCrunch reported that Facebook assures that no personally identifiable information or contact information was improperly disclosed and that the company plans to notify all impacted developers about the leak today and has already begun.
“Due to an error in our email delivery system, weekly business performance summaries we send to developers about their account were also sent to a small group of those developer’s app testers,” the company admitted.
“No personal information about people on Facebook was shared. We’re sorry for the error and have updated our system to prevent it from happening again.”
Yep, the company is again sorry but it’s unlikely if this is the last apology coming from the social networking giant that continues to give us privacy disasters after disasters. While Facebook has repeatedly promised the public and lawmakers that it is strengthening controls over how user data is accessed and shared on its platform, it is difficult to trust a company that continues to be at the center of one issue after another that just shows its typically reckless approach to its users and their privacy.
