A Facebook Inc. function designed to let people tell friends and family they are safe after a disaster mistakenly asked users far from Sunday’s deadly explosion in Pakistan if they were in harm’s way.
The messages resulted from a bug in Facebook’s “safety check” feature, which, when activated, allows Facebook users to mark themselves as safe on their profiles if they are near a natural disaster or bombing. The errant messages on Sunday reached some Facebook users in places as far away as New York and Washington, D.C. with texts and notifications asking if they were harmed by the explosion in Lahore, Pakistan, which killed at least 65 people.
Texts from Facebook asked: “Have you been affected by the explosion?” according to screenshots posted by users on Twitter. While Facebook smartphone notifications referenced Lahore, at least some text messages it sent didn’t specify where the explosion took place, prompting momentary alarm for some users. One Twitter user wrote: “Thankfully I’m nowhere near the #Lahore bombing. Facebook Safety Check gave me a fright for sec making me think something nearby happened.”
It isn’t clear how many people received the mistaken notifications. Facebook, in a post on its site Sunday, said: “Unfortunately, many people not affected by the crisis received a notification asking if they were okay. This kind of bug is counter to the product’s intent. We worked quickly to resolve the issue and we apologize to anyone who mistakenly received the notification.”
Source: MarketWatch
