As News earlier this week, users who gave Facebook their phone number in order to get two-factor codes via text communications also ended up taking hit with a blast of notifications. Users’ responses to these information texts ended up being posted on their Facebook walls, or as explanations on their friends’ posts.
Security experts analyzed the notification texts, debating that they would discourage users from performing an important security feature.
Facebook’s chief security officer Alex Stamos now says that the information texts were a bug, and the business will roll out a fix in the next few days.
“The last thing we want is for users to avoid helpful security traits because they fear they will receive separate notifications,” Stamos wrote in a blog post. “We are running to ensure that people who sign up for two-factor authentication won’t receive non-security-similar notifications from us unless they explicitly choose to receive them, and the same will be true for those who hired up in the past.”
Facebook never thought to send SMS notifications to two-factor authentication users, Stamos said. He also confessed to any inconvenience caused by the security messages.
Stamos also wrote the fact that responding to the notification texts produced in unexpected posts on Facebook. “For years, before the pervasiveness of smartphones, we supported posting to Facebook via text message, but this point is less useful these days. As a result, we are working to oppose this functionality soon,” he said.
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