Facebook has managed to suffer one more privacy hiccup before the year's end.
On Monday morning, the social network temporarily disabled its New Year's message tool — a feature allowing users to send good tidings to each other at the stroke of midnight — after a British blogger found a security breach in the system's code, exposing private messages publicly.
It restored the service early Monday morning.
Jack Jenkins, a technology student at Aberystwyth University in Wales, discovered that tweaking a URL address allowed him to see messages and photos sent by strangers using the "Midnight Message Delivery" app.
Jenkins posted his finding on his blog, saying he was able to view a personal New Year's message and private family photo sent by a stranger to another named Facebook user.