French Privacy Watchdog Latest to Debunk Facebook Messages on Wall Myth

An investigation by the French privacy watchdog has found no truth to worldwide press reports last week that a Facebook bug was exposing old private messages to public view. Users had not grasped the public nature of the personal messages they were posting, and the "bug" was in their understanding of Facebook's privacy settings, the French National Commission on Computing and Liberty (CNIL) said late Tuesday.

French newspaper Metro reported on Sept. 24 that a Facebook user had discovered that what he thought were private messages from 2009 or earlier were now appearing in his public timeline. The newspaper reported that its staff had observed the same phenomenon in their accounts, and claimed a bug in Facebook's code was leaking private messages. As the news report was repeated worldwide, other Facebook users made the same observations and claims, forcing Facebook to issue a denial.

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