Last week, birthday details of over 80 million FaceBook users were inadvertently exposed due to a bug in the test version of the web site.

Sophos Senior Technology Consultant Graham Cluely discovered the bug while he was checking the new Facebook design. He noted that birth dates of some of his very reclusive and privacy-obsessed acquaintances were popping up when actually they should have been hidden.

While Facebook does allow the user to control who can have access to private information, the information was accessible to all users online in this case. Although a small glitch, this could have a serious impact as identity thieves can misuse this valuable piece of information.

According to Cluely, the new profile page essentially ignored the privacy setting to withhold the data of birth. On Wednesday, Facebook issued a statement saying, "For a brief period of time, a small number of users were able to access a private beta of Facebook's new site design meant only for developers. During that time, some of those users had their birthdays revealed due to a bug."

However, there is no information as to how long the data was exposed and how many people noticed it as the issue was patched within hours of its discovery. Cluley himself did not consider this a major data breach, but he said it should serve as a warning to people who put a lot of information on social networks. He added, "It raises a more serious question which is, 'Can you trust these social networks to look after your data properly?'"

Source: PC World