• TechCrunch Europe, Wednesday, May 5, 2010 1:18 PM

Facebook has admitted that "for a limited period of time, a bug permitted some users' chat messages and pending friend requests to be made visible to their friends by manipulating the 'preview my profile' feature of Facebook privacy settings." The social network insists that its engineers have since diagnosed and resolved the issue.

"You've got to hand it to Facebook," writes TechCrunch Europe, which first reported what it considered "a major security flaw." "They certainly know how to do security -- not." Added TechCrunch: "I know Facebook wants us to share more information and open up, but I'm not sure that this is quite what they had in mind." That last burn speaks to the serious issue of online privacy breaches. Facebook's growth strategy depends on users sharing more and more personal information with the world. Any reservations they may have -- to say nothing of a large scale revolt -- put the company's long term prospects at risk.

Read the whole story at TechCrunch Europe »