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Facebook publishes your friends' private messages as wall posts

18 points by atestu ↗ HN
I can't find an English link to submit but it's a issue that's been confirmed in France at least http://rezonances.blog.lemonde.fr/2012/09/24/facebook-bug-et-rend-publics-les-messages-prives-de-ses-membres/

Check your wall. For me it was 2009 and earlier.

The worst part is probably the fact that the messages that YOU sent to friends are currently on their wall right now, and there is no easy way that I know of to delete them.

EDIT: quickest way to hide all of your friend's posts on your wall http://cl.ly/image/0s1e093Q0s1m

EDIT: it's now the top story on LeMonde.fr (biggest paper in France) http://lemonde.fr and on TF1 (biggest private TV channel) http://lci.tf1.fr/high-tech/facebook-des-messages-prives-publies-sur-les-timeline-7545127.html It's happening to all of my French friends and a lot of US people too (I've been living in the US for almost 2 years…)

9 comments

[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 32.5 ms ] thread
wilfra
No way this is true, or you wouldn't need to post some obscure French source to prove it - it would be on CNN.
pkandathil
Just checked, this not happening. At least not for my profile and I am in Canada.
janeesah
Um it was on mine... I just had to go hide them all. WTF FACEBOOK.

*edit: I'm in the U.S.

j15e
Crazy, everyone has stop working at the office ;p
dhaval2025
just saw it on my profile, for the year 2008, had to go hide it all. I am in the US
KThornton
I'm pretty sure I had this issue - changed a bunch of my privacy settings, and tried to go find specific posts that were in fact DM's from the past, publicly displayed on my timeline, but couldn't. Also saw this response from FB on TC:

A spokesperson told Constine:

“Every report we’ve seen, we’ve gone back and checked. We haven’t seen one report that’s been confirmed [of a private message being exposed]. A lot of the confusion is because before 2009 there were no likes and no comments on wall posts. People went back and forth with wall posts instead of having a conversation [in the comments of single wall post.]“

Previously Facebook issued the statement:

“A small number of users raised concerns after what they mistakenly believed to be private messages appeared on their Timeline. Our engineers investigated these reports and found that the messages were older wall posts that had always been visible on the users’ profile pages. Facebook is satisfied that there has been no breach of user privacy.”