A 10-year-old took home a hefty payday when he discovered a bug that allowed him to delete Instagram comments made by accounts other than his own. Facebook paid the boy, identified only as Jani, a $10,000 bounty for finding the bug, according to Finnish site Iltalehti.
He demonstrated his ability to erase text posts by deleting a comment made using a test account made by Iltalehti. Jani told Iltalehti he could do the same for celebs such as Justin Bieber.
Jani’s father said that Jani and his twin brother have discovered flaws previously, but none serious enough to fetch any kind of bounty.
Facebook offers a reward to anyone that can find security flaws in its technology, including Instagram. According to its most recent release on the subject, the company received 13,000 error submissions last year, of which 526 were actual flaws. Facebook disbursed $936,000 to 210 persons, which comes out to around $1,780 per submission. Google offers a similar program, most notably to the guy who was successfully able to purchase Google.com when its domain temporarily and accidentally lapsed.
While we can’t claim to have found flaws ourselves, we can claim to be jealous of the kid who was paid $10,000 and got to delete Justin Bieber’s Instagram comments.
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