Want to view who your friends are chatting with or who has requested them as friends? A new privacy loophole made it possible to do exactly that. It’s a major privacy flaw and it has resulted in Facebook Chat being shut down. The error comes at a time that Facebook is under increasing pressure to empower Facebook users through transparent privacy settings.
This morning we were alerted to a bug that enabled users to view their friends’ active chat sessions as well as any of their incoming friend requests. While the friend requests bug has been resolved, users were able to access friend requests as well as chat by using the view as privacy feature which lets users see how their profile looks to specific friends.
We held off on publishing the flaw initially as we didn’t want to expose the problem, but Facebook has since shut down chat as a response and has fixed the friend requests bug. My guess is that this problem will be resolved by later in the day, but we’ve already many complaints from users who are distressed about not having access to chat. Most distressed users however do not realize that it was shut down for their own protection.
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If people want to use facebook chat they can go to http://www.meebo.com and sign on to their facebook chat through there it is completely free with no surveys or other junk.
Comment by Cynthia — May 5, 2010 @ 8:18 am
ok thanks for that!
Comment by Marcella Kehoe — May 5, 2010 @ 8:18 am
thanks for the headup on no chat at this time.
Comment by Pat Black — May 5, 2010 @ 8:24 am
You want to know what I noticed in the "view as" mode? It seems that puts you into the other person's COMMENTING mode too. Meaning, if you click under your own status, THAT PERSON'S comment field comes up, and you can leave yourself a comment AS THEM (it seems; I noticed it but haven't actually tried it.) Anyone else notice this?
Comment by Ally — May 5, 2010 @ 10:34 am
Why would anyone let FB monitor their chat? There are other programs that you should be using to talk to friends, IF in fact they are your real friends. I disable chat at all times. I don't need people knowing when I'm online.
Comment by DSM — May 5, 2010 @ 12:07 pm
are you home
Comment by Adam Kniesel — May 5, 2010 @ 7:31 pm
And this is the good intentions, but too big for their britches type stuff that will continue to happen as they roll out significant changes…
Comment by Christa Watson — May 6, 2010 @ 8:49 am
The bug has gotten worse and I can't believe no one is reporting on it! Yesterday afternoon, most profiles which had their "info" page set to "friends only" were wide open to the world. Scan through FB help pages such as this to see. http://www.facebook.com/help/?question=506027#!/h…
I had to delete most of my information because birthdate, employers etc… was wide open. Right now it appears FB is making favorite quotations public too. There is no longer a privacy option to keep this hidden to only friends. I had to delete mine.
Comment by Laura Pop — May 6, 2010 @ 6:53 pm
i don't do Facebook. But I can get in under a false name anytime I wish and will be keeping an eye on it waiting for the next privacy screw up. It's only a matter of time before peoples walls or messages are exposed, or photos. Then it's game on.
Comment by S. Talker — May 6, 2010 @ 10:50 pm
Nice spotted and thanks for the information.
Comment by Angel — May 9, 2010 @ 8:13 am