Imagine if your private conversations with family, friends, coworkers, and romantic interests were accidentally being sent to random people instead of you. Well, that’s exactly what happened to “a small number of users” during an unusual Facebook glitch late Wednesday night.
“During our regular code push…a bug caused some misrouting to a small number of users for a short period of time,” said Facebook in a statement regarding the accident. The problem was discovered “moments after it began” and people behind the scenes at Facebook temporarily suspended access for users who were being affected.
For those who received the messages in error, it was quite a shock. “I literally have people’s private correspondence with their names attached,” said Pablo S. Torre, a Facebook user who told the Wall Street Journal that his inbox was flooded with over 100 e-mails clearly not intended for him.
A spokesperson for the social networking giant said that the company was still investigating last night and did not have specific numbers related to the scope of the enormous glitch.
This error comes just a couple months after Facebook overhauled its privacy infrastucture, giving users more control over who can and cannot see certain information about them.
