CHICAGO — Did you get a text from Facebook Sunday morning asking if you were OK after an explosion nearby? You're not alone.
While there's no doubt that Sunday's deadly suicide bomb attack in Lahore, Pakistan has devastated families across the globe, some Chicagoans at first believed the explosion was a lot closer to home.
In Lincoln Park Sunday morning, phones dinged near DePaul University, where people received vague text alerts asking if they were safe:
People received the alerts as regular Facebook notifications as well, which helpfully pointed out where the attack actually was (more than 7,000 miles away from Chicago):
The alerts are part of Facebook's "Safety Check" feature, which helped those with loved ones in Paris during the attacks there figure out if their friends and families in the city were OK. But it appears to have glitched Sunday, when people across the globe got safety check alerts, regardless of their proximity to Pakistan.
Facebook just asked me if I am okay after an explosion in Pakistan,
— Gunnar Oden (@GunnarOden) March 27, 2016
I mean...I'm 6000km away ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ pic.twitter.com/ivxEHJjNpR
this really freaked me out until I realized that Facebook thought I was in Pakistan pic.twitter.com/3w6iHCsIaC
— Rachel Zarrell (@rachelzarrell) March 27, 2016
Facebook apologized for the alerts, blaming a glitch.
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