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Facebook bug briefly set users' settings to public

As many as 14 million Facebook Inc. users may have had their default sharing settings for posts inadvertently set to public over a 10-day period in May, the company disclosed June 7.

A software bug, which was live from May 18 to May 27, updated the audience for some users' posts to "public" with no warning. Facebook was unclear about how many of the 14 million people may have shared information without realizing their posts were public.

The problem has been fixed, and Facebook will immediately begin notifying people who were impacted, the company said.

"We recently found a bug that automatically suggested posting publicly when some people were creating their Facebook posts," Erin Egan, Facebook's chief privacy officer, said in a statement. "We'd like to apologize for this mistake."

Facebook has been criticized for a string of data privacy scandals in recent months, most notably involving the misuse of millions of users' data by the now-defunct Cambridge Analytica LLC and other third-party app developers.