FB Chat is currently unavailable because of a bug that was reported to the Facebook team. What kind of bug? One that allows your friends and family to see your private conversations, among other things. This disturbing error was brought to my attention by Facebook's updated status, which says:
"Chat is unavailable as we work quickly to fix a bug reported to us. It should return to normal soon. Because of the bug, people could view friends' chat messages and friend requests for a limited amount of time if they manipulated the "preview my profile" feature in a specific way. We've fixed that issue and took down Chat as soon as we became aware of it. We apologize for the inconvenience."
This seems more like a complete invasion of privacy, rather than just an inconvenience. Imagine a relative, co-worker, or loved one reading some of the things you say in FB chat? I, myself, don't typically have personal, private conversations through Facebook chat, but it definitely has happened on occasion. I even know a few people who constantly fight over FB chat because they get so mad that they don't want to speak on the phone. I would be mortified if I found out that any of my friends could read the conversations that I thought were private and confidential.
Employees at Facebook seem to have fixed this bug and FB chat appears to be back up and working. Their status update was only posted 40 minutes ago and already has over 1,800 comments from concerned users.
The moral of this story: No matter how much you trust a website, always be careful about the things you say and do online!
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