Facebook says ‘private messages appearing on public timeline’ rumour ‘false’

September 25, 2012 | Science / Technology | Written by

London, Sept 25: A report that Facebook users’ old private messages have been published publicly on the social network is false, the firm has said.

Some users, mostly in France, complained that their ‘private messages’ sent between 2007-2009 were suddenly published on the timeline.

Facebook, however, said that ‘these messages were older wall posts that had always been visible on the users’ profile pages,’ the BBC reports.

The report quoted a source at the company, as saying that engineers said there was ‘no way’ the two areas of data could get mixed up.

The source said that ‘no mechanism’ had ever been created that would allow a private message to be published onto a user’s wall or timeline, the report said.

Meanwhile, despite Facebook’s statement, many users reported finding what they believed to be old private material.

“There are messages I’ve got on my wall that are most definitely private messages! From 2006 all the way up to 2012,” a user of the social networking site complained. (ANI)