If you came across a notification from Facebook telling you about a technical problem concerning your blocked list, unfortunately you are one of the 800,000 people affected by the bug discovered by Facebook.
According to Egan, company's chief security officer, this bug was active between the dates 29th May and 5th June, unblocking people from users' blocked lists. The unblocked people did not attain the friend status of concerned users on the social media, but the flaw did provide them with access to their public pictures and posts. It also gave them chances to send friend requests and messages to individuals who had forbade them from doing so.
While this may seem trivial, and while it may seem that this problem affected only a small population, it shall not be forgotten why users block others in the first place. This activity on the network is done primarily to avoid receiving harassing messages from harassers. For an individual who does not want anything to do with the the person bothering him/her, this bug was a huge problem. It gave people with malicious intentions to once again intimidate them.
But the good news is that this bug was detected and dealt with, as soon as it was discovered. What must be appreciated is the fact that the engineers at Facebook acted responsibly and swiftly in the matter, blocking the unblocked again, generating notifications to the affected in the process, so that they may confirm that blocked lists were unchanged.
According to Egan, company's chief security officer, this bug was active between the dates 29th May and 5th June, unblocking people from users' blocked lists. The unblocked people did not attain the friend status of concerned users on the social media, but the flaw did provide them with access to their public pictures and posts. It also gave them chances to send friend requests and messages to individuals who had forbade them from doing so.
While this may seem trivial, and while it may seem that this problem affected only a small population, it shall not be forgotten why users block others in the first place. This activity on the network is done primarily to avoid receiving harassing messages from harassers. For an individual who does not want anything to do with the the person bothering him/her, this bug was a huge problem. It gave people with malicious intentions to once again intimidate them.
But the good news is that this bug was detected and dealt with, as soon as it was discovered. What must be appreciated is the fact that the engineers at Facebook acted responsibly and swiftly in the matter, blocking the unblocked again, generating notifications to the affected in the process, so that they may confirm that blocked lists were unchanged.
