Did Facebook tell your friends that you had died?

Death bug strikes many on social network.

Graham Cluley
Graham Cluley
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@gcluley

Facebook death bug

As BBC News reports:

An unusual bug on Facebook briefly labelled many people as dead.

The error on Friday caused the social network to show a memorial banner on user profiles for people who were still alive.

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Users posted status updates to reassure friends and family they were not dead, despite Facebook’s message.

“Victims” of the Facebook death bug included founder Mark Zuckerberg himself.

A Facebook spokesperson apologies for the monumental cock-up:

“This was a terrible error that we have now fixed. We are very sorry that this happened.”

What was Facebook motto, again? Oh yeah, “move fast and break things”.

Hope they didn’t break too much when they told folks their loved ones had died.


Graham Cluley is an award-winning keynote speaker who has given presentations around the world about cybersecurity, hackers, and online privacy. A veteran of the computer security industry since the early 1990s, he wrote the first ever version of Dr Solomon's Anti-Virus Toolkit for Windows, makes regular media appearances, and is the co-host of the popular "Smashing Security" podcast. Follow him on Twitter, Mastodon, Threads, Bluesky, or drop him an email.

One comment on “Did Facebook tell your friends that you had died?”

  1. drsolly

    I was just about to make a claim on my life insurance, and then they decided that I wasn't dead after all.

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