Hulu's New Facebook Feature Backfires

Facebook Connect Shut Down By Hulu After User Account Mixup

On Friday, TV and movie streaming site Huluannounced the launch of its own Facebook Connect portal, which lets users sign in to Hulu.com using their Facebook login data and ports some of Facebook's social features over to Hulu.

Less than 24 hours later, however, the feature was shut down.

A post on the Hulu Blog explains the snafu:

When we launched our Facebook Connect feature early this morning, we discovered that a small number of users weren't seeing their own Hulu account information upon login. 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. We've been able to confirm approximately 50 affected users whose profile data, including email addresses, could have been accessed. But no one gained access to Hulu systems or highly sensitive user information such as passwords or credit card numbers.

While no data was stolen, according to Hulu, some users were able to view other Hulu users' account info.

For now, Hulu has disabled Facebook Connect but promises to restore the feature once all the kinks have been worked out. Users are asked to log into Hulu using their Hulu account data, in the meantime.

"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," Hulu also wrote.

Hulu launched Facebook Connect with partners Coors Lite and Microsoft search engine Bing, which also sponsored a free month of Hulu Plus subscriptions as an incentive for users to sign in via Facebook.

Recently, rumors surfaced claiming that Hulu is in talks with Google, Yahoo and Microsoft about a potential sale.