An attempt to integrate Facebook features in the streaming video service Hulu caused some problems earlier this week. In a post on the official Hulu blog site, the company admitted that " ... we discovered a technical issue affecting a limited number of users who connected to Hulu through Facebook." The issue itself caused some of Hulu"s users to gain temporary access to the accounts of other Hulu members.
According to the blog post, "We’re still drilling down on the precise nature of the issue, but we know that it was a coding and configuration error on Hulu’s side, and not the result of hacking, or other third party actions, or a vulnerability in Facebook Connect." The blog adds that just 50 Hulu users were affected by the issue. Those user had personal info such as email addresses exposed but Hulu said that more important info such as credit card numbers were not affected.
At the moment the Facebook integration is on hold with Hulu stating, " ... we disabled all the connection points to Facebook Connect on Hulu, and we required all Hulu users to login again directly through our site. We are also taking the precautionary measure of resetting privacy settings to the most restrictive settings for anyone who logged into their Hulu account through Facebook during the affected period. Once we are certain that the issue has been fully addressed, we will re-launch our Facebook Connect program."
As we have reported earlier this week Hulu has been the the subject of a possible sale with Google looking like it is the leader in sales negotiations.