Facebook had to temporarily close down its online chat function on Wednesday after a glitch in the software allowed people’s friends on the social networking site to view each other’s private chat conversations, sparking further controversy about Facebook privacy issues.
It appears that for a limited period of time, both chat messages and pending friend requests could be viewed.
A Facebook spokesman commented in an email: “When we received reports of the problem, our engineers promptly diagnosed it and temporarily disabled the chat function.” He went on to say: "We also pushed out a fix to take care of the visible friend requests."
This glitch exposes further the potential privacy concerns of social networking sites such as Facebook. According to a Consumer Reports survey entitled “Social Insecurity”, more than half of adults using social networks have posted potentially risky personal information, including their dates of birth or photos of their children, to their profile page.
Andrew Brandt, a lead threat research analyst at computer security company Webroot said that Facebook has become an online repository for personal data and commented that the company should protect user data as carefully as banks treat contents of safe deposit boxes. He also pointed out that online users should remember that any data they put on the internet can “escape into the wild.”
