Some Facebook users' live chat messages and pending friend requests were briefly visible to their contacts this week, as the result of a bug in the massive social network's "Preview My Profile" feature. Facebook confirmed the contents of a video posted to TechCrunch Europe on Wednesday that demonstrated the flaw, and has temporarily disabled its live chat software, but denied that it was a large-scale security problem.
What exactly happened in the video? Facebook's privacy settings offer a feature called "Preview My Profile," which lets you type in the name of someone on your friends list and then see how that person sees your profile in accordance with your privacy settings. But it appears that somehow "Preview My Profile" actually gave the user in question a glimpse from inside the other user's profile, and so it displayed live Facebook Chat conversations and replaced the original user's list of pending friend requests with the user whose "view" was being previewed.
More: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13577_3-20004213-36.html
What exactly happened in the video? Facebook's privacy settings offer a feature called "Preview My Profile," which lets you type in the name of someone on your friends list and then see how that person sees your profile in accordance with your privacy settings. But it appears that somehow "Preview My Profile" actually gave the user in question a glimpse from inside the other user's profile, and so it displayed live Facebook Chat conversations and replaced the original user's list of pending friend requests with the user whose "view" was being previewed.
More: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13577_3-20004213-36.html