A Belgian ethical hacker has found a glitch in social media giant Facebook's search functionality which is now being termed 'abusive search'. Facebook's search bar lets you track and find information about your female friends easily but the same won't happen when you look for your male friends. The glitch was first reported on Twitter and has been confirmed by several others like TheNextWeb, which reported that it was able to repeat this glitch across a variety of Facebook accounts.
Type in "photos of my female" and you get additional search suggestions that will violate women's privacy. This type photos of them at the beach...you know...where they are likely to wear bikinis. These are abusive search suggestions and should be addressed @fbnewsroom. pic.twitter.com/VH4Lu561tz
- J. Grygiel π³οΈβππΊπΈ (@jmgrygiel) February 13, 2019
"When you type 'photos of my female friends' into the search bar, Facebook will return a seemingly-random selection of photos from your female friends," reported TheNextWeb. Some have even reported that when you type in "photos of my female", you get additional auto-search suggestions that may violate the women's privacy. However, when you search for "photos of my male friends", no auto-complete suggestions appear.
Meer zelfs: bij het opvragen van foto's van je mannelijke vrienden, gaat Facebook er van uit dat je foto's van vrouwen wou gaan bekijken. *Facepalm* pic.twitter.com/lIOBtAnvla
- Inti De Ceukelaire (@intidc) February 11, 2019
The photos that appeared while searching for 'female friends' usually came from groups and accounts that the user did not follow. "I found that I could no longer filter by men, but it was still possible to filter by females," said De Ceukelaire according to the TheNextWeb.
Last month, it was reported that Facebook is paying $ 20 a months to users in the age group of 13-35 years to install a VPN app that required root access. The app was taking data, even the encrypted ones and was handing it over to the guys at Facebook.
Meanwhile, the glitch also remind us of the Facemash, Facebook's predecessor, that allowed students at Harvard University to rate their female friends based on their physical attributes. However, this seems more like an innocent mistake than the product of Zuckerberg's reckless dormroom pranks.