Instagram users found their Stories being displayed to those who don’t follow them

Instagram users were shocked to see Stories of people they do not follow. A Twitter user mentioned the issue to TechCrunch as he was confused to find strangers seeing his Stories. Instagram informed that a bug was responsible for the privacy issue that users faced.  It also told that the bug has been resolved and that too within hours of being brought to the notice of the security team.  However, the company still doesn’t know the cause of the bug and is looking into the matter.

“We’re aware of an issue that caused a small number of people’s Instagram Stories trays to show accounts they don’t follow. If your account is private, your Stories were not seen by people who don’t follow you. This was caused by a bug that we have resolved,”said Instagram’s spokesperson.

Although Facebook Stories wasn’t impacted,the whole situation has shaken confidence in Facebook, Inc., Instagram’s parent company. The company’s ability to safeguard users’ data is being questioned after a series of privacy issues coming up. The company has been through a difficult year in terms of privacy and security issues. The company’s security team is overwhelmed with a series of technical issues.  Recently, a bug in Facebook changed the privacy settings of the status update of around 14 million users. Another privacy issue exposed more than 6 million users’ unposted photos.

Facebook and Instagram have a huge number of users which makes the company extremely profitable. However, being exposed to such problems can instantly impact its huge population and market value.