About 14 million Facebook users around the world inadvertently had their default sharing setting set to public for during a four-day period in May while the company was testing a new feature, CNN reported Thursday.
Facebook revealed the "bug" affected those users from May 18 to May 22 – and after Facebook employees discovered it, the company went back and changed the privacy settings to private for all posts the users shared during that time, CNN reported.
The cleanup took five days, CNN reported.
The social media company is sending a message urging the affected users to "please review your posts" and a link to a list of what they shared on Facebook while the bug was active, CNN reported.
"We recently found a bug that automatically suggested posting publicly when some people were creating their Facebook posts," Erin Egan, Facebook's chief privacy officer, told CNN.
"We have fixed this issue and starting [Thursday] we are letting everyone affected know and asking them to review any posts they made during that time. To be clear, this bug did not impact anything people had posted before – and they could still choose their audience just as they always have."
The glitch comes on the heels of Facebook's grilling in Congress for mishandling user data.
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