Facebook Inc.’s Messenger Kids app has just one job: Prevent children from chatting with people who aren’t approved by their parents. But it apparently couldn’t even get that right.
The Verge reported Monday that Facebook FB, +2.00% has alerted thousands of parents about a design flaw in the app that allowed kids to communicate with not just their friends, but with friends of friends — including adults — who their own parents had not vetted.
Facebook confirmed the bug to MarketWatch. “We recently notified some parents of Messenger Kids account users about a technical error that we detected affecting a small number of group chats. We turned off the affected chats and provided parents with additional resources on Messenger Kids and online safety,” a Facebook spokesperson said.
Messenger Kids is a free app providing what Facebook calls a “controlled environment” for children under 13. “Kids can only connect with parent-approved contacts,” Facebook says on the app’s homepage.
But that was apparently not the case with group chats. In regular one-on-one chats, a parent must approve who their child is chatting with. But in group chats, kids were apparently able to invite any of their contacts — including adults — who had been pre-approved by their own parents, but were not necessarily approved by their friends’ parents.
Because of the ages of the users, the app is subject to the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, and a violation could be another black eye for Facebook over user privacy.
The social-media giant has faced a series of user-data miscues in recent years, and Facebook is reportedly near a $5 billion settlement with the Federal Trade Commission over the Cambridge Analytica data scandal.
That hasn’t hurt Facebook stock, however. It’s traded near all-time highs of late, ahead of the company’s quarterly earnings report Wednesday. Facebook shares are up 54% year to date, compared to the S&P 500’s SPX, +0.28% 19% gain.
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