A recent flaw in Instagram's privacy policies has been exposed by an internet news publishing website Quartz. The privacy flaw showed that photos uploaded by Instagram users and tagged as private are still accessible to the public domain. Instagram has already recognized the flaw and has devised a patch that will fix it before malicious users can take advantage of it.
Instagram released the patch on Jan. 9 and has stated that the flaw is no longer accessible and that it is working to upgrade its security protocols to make sure that it can preserve the privacy of its users.
Before the flaw was fixed, if a user uploaded a content using a public account and then decided to switch its account to private, the uploaded contents when the account was still public will not be tagged as private and therefore can still be accessed. According to reports, this security flaw is only present in desktop browsers and has not affected Instagram's iOS and Android apps.
Although Instagram is rarely scrutinized for its privacy protocol, its parent company Facebook has been on target of privacy and security advocates for its lackluster protocol in terms of protecting its 1.5 billion user's privacy. Recent hacking incidents show that Facebook has not been up to the task of providing its users with the privacy and security they much needed nowadays.
Facebook and Instagram are two of the biggest social networking sites today with a combined figure of almost 2 billion monthly users. Although Facebook has been plagued with privacy and security issues for years now, Instagram has firmly hold its ground in providing privacy to its users, however, this recent breach of their privacy protocol may prove otherwise. For Instagram to retain its users trust in handling their personal information it will have to create a new security policy or else they might end up losing its users due to privacy and security issues.