New Facebook App For Teens Has Massive Privacy Holes

Privacy symbol with digital globe, 3d renderFacebook recently launched an app designed for users under the age of 21 to share videos and connect with each other locally. It’s an innovative idea, and one designed to challenge Snapchat’s supremacy in the market, but there’s one major problem: the app has virtually no privacy settings.

The app, called Lifestage, launched last week, and is currently only available for iPhone users. Though the app is still in its early days and suffers from many of the requisite problems of a new product, the first wave of users who downloaded it were met with a troubling message when they signed up.

“Everything you post in Lifestage is always public and viewable by everyone, inside and outside your school,” a screen in the app’s sign-up says. “There is no way to limit the audience of your videos. We can’t confirm that people who claim to go to a certain school actually go to that school. All videos you upload to your profile and record are fully public content.”

Needless to say, that is a huge problem for a product designed for young users. Some have already left negative reviews for the app, complaining about how much information it asks for, including their Snapchat and Instagram profiles and the school they attend.

Facebook still has time to work out the kinks for this brand-new app, but the fact that it launched a tool for teens with virtually no privacy controls is shocking.