Now, Facebook acknowledges 'bug' turned users' private posts public

After facing flak for improperly sharing personal data of millions of users, popular social networking site Facebook has now invited new criticism.

The social mediaacknowledged on Thursday that a software glitch had changed the privacy setting of its users by making their personal posts public.

According to Facebook, some 14 million users were affected by the technical glitch between May 18 and May 27.

Erin Egan, Facebook's chief privacy officer, said that the company recently "found a bug that automatically suggested posting publicly when some people were creating their Facebook posts."

Facebook said the bug surfaced when the social media was implementing a new way to share the posts.

The bug made the default setting or suggested a method of sharing the posts as "public" instead of "only for specific users"or "friends".

Facebook added that though it corrected the problem on May 22, it could not change all the posts and therefore was notifying the affected users.

Chief privacy officer Egan said,"To be clear, this bug did not impact anything people had posted before -- and they could still choose their audience just as they always have. We'd like to apologize for this mistake."

He added, "Starting today we are letting everyone affected know and asking them to review any posts they made during that time".

The social networking site has recently faced a series of embarrassments over the misuse of personal data of millions of its users.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg admitted in April to have made a "huge mistake" as personal data of up to 87 million users may have been improperly shared with Cambridge Analytica.

The social networking site which was founded in 2004, had reached data-sharing partnerships with at least 60 device makers including Apple, Amazon, BlackBerry, Microsoft and Samsung over the last decade.