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Safety Check bug causes panic

Staff Writer
By Staff Writer, ITWeb
Johannesburg, 29 Mar 2016
A glitch in Facebook's Safety Check asked people far away from the affected area in Pakistan to check-in safe.
A glitch in Facebook's Safety Check asked people far away from the affected area in Pakistan to check-in safe.

Facebook's Safety Check feature was criticised this weekend after random people who were nowhere near the Pakistan crisis site were asked to check-in safe.

The suspected terrorist bombing that took place in the city of Lahore in Pakistan on Sunday killed over 50 people and injured more than 100.

However, people outside of Pakistan and nowhere near the bombings received notifications asking them to check-in safely on the service.

The social network apologised in a statement: "Unfortunately, many people not affected by the crisis received a notification asking if they were okay. This kind of bug is counter to our intent. We worked quickly to resolve the issue and we apologise to anyone who mistakenly received the notification."

On Twitter, people as far as New York complained about getting notifications asking if they were okay. Some notifications sent via SMS did not specify the bombings took place in Pakistan.

One Twitter user, based in the Philippines, said: "Just got this safety check from Facebook about an explosion, but I'm in Pampanga and I'm guessing it's for Pakistan."

The feature was last year slated when it was activated for the Paris bombings and not similar acts of terror in Beirut.

At the time, it said it was testing the feature for terrorism attacks, as previously it had only been used in the aftermath of natural disasters.

The social network has since activated the feature more frequently. It was used earlier this month in the Ivory Coast and Turkey, and last week in Belgium.

It sends out a message to Facebook users within a specific radius of the crisis, using location services. The message asks the user to check-in and let people know if they are safe. Once the user has checked-in on Facebook, a notification is sent to each of their Facebook friends.

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