Facebook has sent out a warning to some 800,000 of its users claiming that a bug caused its system to temporarily unblock people that had been previously blocked by the users.
Through the notice published on Monday, the network revealed that blocked users were able to access the profiles of those who had blocked them and some sent them messages. These functionalities should not be possible when users are blocked.
Facebook revealed that the bug was live between May 29 and June 5 and has been fixed with the affected users slated to receive a message from Facebook warning them of the bug.
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Among the over 800,000 affected users, 83% had one person blocked unblocked by the bug while the rest (17%) who are about 136,000 had more than one person unblocked.
Facebook’s privacy boss Erin Egan apologized for the error, revealing in a blog post that the social network is reaching out to the affected users about the screw-up.
The news of the exploit is yet another misstep from Facebook as it attempts to recover from a string of recent scandals. The company suffered recently when it was revealed that data research firm Cambridge Analytica misused the personal data of tens of millions of the platform’s users.
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