Social media giant Facebook has recently learned that a bug in one of its programme tools 'inadvertently' revealed information about its users without their knowledge.
According to Fox News, the bug was identified as a 'programming flaw', which revealed information related to email address, contact number or other users with whom they share connection, when they made their profiles offline for sometime.
The bug was not identified by the internal staff of Facebook but by a 'White Hat' security researcher, to which the company rewarded at least 500 dollars.
The report said that the tool which allows users to take down their profiles for sometime, posed a threat because of the flaw with which the contact details that were meant to be left unshared like a private work line, or a mobile number could have been revealed to an unknown number of individuals.
However, the company assured that no financial information was revealed because of the bug and the authorities in US, Canada and Europe have been notified and the affected users will be informed through emails.
Facebook further said that the company will be working 'doubly hard' to ensure that no such lapse occurs again.
The report further added that the Internet companies are increasingly relying on 'good hackers' to find security flaws within their networks before nefarious actors gain access to them.