Facebook Groups privacy glitch – did social network move too fast and break things?

Many Facebook users have been surprised to find that they have been unwittingly resubscribed to Groups that they left years before, potentially allowing them to view sensitive and private information.

Here’s how one Facebook user described the rude awakening she had when her mobile phone alerted her to all the new groups she had been subscribed to:

“It’s 3 a.m. I was asleep and my phone suddenly tells me I have 50 notifications from groups I somehow joined while I was sleeping. Some of them were groups I used to belong to but left, some aren’t. ALL say I joined “24 minutes ago” while I was sleeping. What gives? No notifications saying I was added by anyone, just that I joined.”

Another affected user was Bobby Clarke, who described how he had been subscribed to 250 groups without his permission (or presumably without…

Read more in my article on the Naked Security website.

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Graham Cluley •   @gcluley

Graham Cluley is a veteran of the cybersecurity industry, having worked for a number of security companies since the early 1990s when he wrote the first ever version of Dr Solomon's Anti-Virus Toolkit for Windows. Now an independent analyst, he regularly makes media appearances and is an international public speaker on the topic of cybersecurity, hackers, and online privacy. Follow him on Twitter, Mastodon, Bluesky, or drop him an email.