Facebook Glitch: Your Secrets Are Out

Facebook is a voyeur’s dream. Every picture and post on a “friend’s” wall is there for the looking. But one part of Facebook is sacred in its privacy—messages. If you want to keep something secret, you can always count on sending a private message that will be seen only by the intended reader (that is, of course, unless he or she shares what you write).

But a glitch on Wednesday—first publicized by former Crimson editor Zachary M. Seward ’07—revealed what should not have been seen by outside eyes.

A botch on Facebook’s part sent e-mails to some users with the content of messages intended for other users. Apparently, this particular glitch seems to be “affecting mostly (and possibly only) early Facebook users who attended Harvard,” Business Insider tells us. While that’s good news for us Facebook newbies, it’s still pretty frightening.

Facebook dealt with the problem by cutting some users’ access to the site so that the computer-wizards could assess the damage and see what went wrong.

Though the glitch has supposedly been fixed, you may want to think twice before sending that secret message—you never know when Facebook might be revealing more than you want it to.