Two ministers said that they had intervened after seeing reports that private messages between Facebook users in France had appeared on their “Timelines”, which can reach a wide Internet audience.
The Metro newspaper reported that a “non-systemic” problem at Facebook had caused certain personal messages, some several years old, to be displayed on the Timelines which serve as a profile page with details selected by the user.
Facebook in France denied any breakdown in its security systems and said that while some old data had appeared where it should not have, none of it originated from private messages.
“A minority of users were worried after seeing messages they thought to be private appearing on their Timelines,” a spokesman for Facebook France said.
“Facebook engineers examined the situation and confirmed that the messages in question were old postings, which had previously been visible on the users’ profiles,” and Facebook refused to accept any fault from their side.
