SAN FRANCISCO, Nov. 17 (UPI) -- Some Facebook users were blocked from the Web site after a bug in its system for detecting fake accounts inadvertently disabled legitimate ones, the site said.
Some reports suggested the bug exclusively affected female Facebook users, CNNMoney.com reported.
"The bug, which was live for a short period of time, caused a very small percentage of Facebook accounts to be mistakenly disabled," a Facebook spokesman said in a statement.
"Upon discovering the bug, we immediately worked to resolve it. It's now been fixed, and we're in the process of reactivating and notifying the people who were affected."
Facebook representatives declined to comment on how many of the social networking site's 500 million accounts were affected, or on the specifics of Tuesday morning's snafu.
Some affected users found their accounts active again Wednesday morning, but only after first receiving e-mail notifications that they were being permanently purged.
Those e-mails appear to have been sent in error.
Affected users were directed by Facebook to a "disabled account appeal" page, which asks users to upload a government-issued photo ID to prove their identity.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the bug is unrelated to the new mail system Facebook launched Monday, CNN reported.
