The bug had unblocked one blocked person in the list of blocked friends of the user.
The bug had unblocked one blocked person in the list of blocked friends of the user.
Facebook is notifying over 8,00,000 users about a bug in Facebook and Messenger which had unblocked the people whom these users had blocked. This bug was active between 29 May and 5 June 2018.
In a blogpost, Facebook confirmed that it has fixed the issue and reinstated the block on users who were blocked.
The block feature of Facebook is quite old. It is used to block people you have no wish to communicate with or who are harassing you, to avoid cyber bullying. Via this feature, those who have been blocked cannot contact the user, nor can they see what content has been posted by the users.
Erin Egan, the chief privacy officer said that the bug had unblocked one blocked person in the list of blocked friends of some users. While the user’s friendship with the blocked person remained unaffected on Facebook, the blocked person could access the user’s posts and contact the user via Messenger.
She also said that the blocked person could have viewed posts targetted to a wider audience and not to those targetted to friends. The tech giant also said that 83 percent of its users were affected.
Egan apologised for the error and confirmed that the issue had been fixed and that the people who were unblocked because of the bug have been reinstated as blocked.
Users can check their list of blocked people on its Safety Center.
