A glitch on Facebook caused some users to receive hundreds of private
messages meant for other people on Wednesday, the social networking site
reported Friday.
“During our regular code push yesterday evening, a bug caused some
misrouting to a small number of users for a short period of time. Our
engineers diagnosed the problem moments after it began and are working to
get everything back in its rightful place," Facebook said in a statement.
"While they fix the issue, affected users will not be able to access the
site.”
The social networking giant is not revealing how many users were affected,
but one unwitting recipient of strangers' private messages was a Wall Street
Journal editor.
Editor Zack Seward reported that he received hundreds of wrongly delivered
messages within the span of an hour - some notifications for applications he
didn't have, and others personal correspondences.
He said he received "one couple’s entire explicit chat session."
The glitch comes less than a month after news broke that Facebook will be
launching its own e-mail client in an attempt to compete with industry
giants like Google's Gmail.
Facebook also came under fire in December when it overhauled its privacy
policy, making it harder for users to hide certain information, such as
their friends' lists and groups.
