You thought that Facebook’s leaks and privacy problems are over just because they’ve been quiet for a few weeks? Well, as always, we were wrong. It seems an error in the email delivery system is the latest snafu that the social media giant is facing as they have mistakenly sent developer analytics reports of some apps to their beta testers who aren’t really part of the developer team. In somewhat unrelated but nevertheless sort of good news, they are currently developing a feature that will tell you how much time you’re spending on your Facebook app to convince you that you might want to stay off of it every once in a while.
But first, let’s talk about the latest mistake that they’ve made. An app developer noticed that their weekly Facebook App Analytics report was sent out to beta testers. These people are normally not part of the company but they still received this sensitive business information that is normally just sent to the developers, admins, and analysts of the respective apps. While it is not that bad for users since the information doesn’t really contain any private information, it may be bad for business since it contains stats about weekly average users, page views, new users, etc. There is a possibility that this information can be leaked to their competitors and that can affect them in some way.
For its part, Facebook said that this was due to “an error in our email delivery system” but assured users that no personal identifiable information was included in the weekly business performance summaries that were sent to some of the app testers. They however did not share how many apps were affected by this error. There are now over a million apps, sites, and bots that use Facebook Analytics, but only apps were affected with this system error which they have now apparently resolved. While it’s not as huge a “scandal” as their other previous publicized mistakes, it’s just another in a growing number of challenges faced by the company.
Meanwhile, as part of founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s promised effort to “protect the community”, Facebook is developing a feature in their Android app that will tell you how much time you’re spending in this sometimes wasteland of social media. Simply called “Your Time on Facebook”, the feature is still in development but from what we can see, it will show you a tally of the minutes or hours you use the app and your average time per day. It will let you set reminders when you’ve already reached the limit that you’ve set for yourself. It’s still a self-policing feature and will not automatically block you from using Facebook so it still mostly depends on the user.
Facebook confirmed that they are indeed developing this tool not just on the main app but also on Instagram. We’re always working on new ways to help make sure people’s time on Facebook is time well spent,” shared one of their spokespersons. No time table has been given as to when this feature will go live.
