The social networking website Facebook has come up with an apology for sending Safety Check notifications related to Sunday’s Lahore, Pakistan suicide bombing to the users in living in other areas, by mistake. The social networking website has sent notifications to people in the United States and United Kingdom among many other areas. The destructive bombing in Lahore, Pakistan took more than 69 lives and injured hundreds.

Users who received SMS notification were specifically worried and confused as the test asked the question, ‘Have you been affected by the explosion?’ but didn’t mention where the explosion had happened.

The company sent a post to its Disaster Response on Facebook page, saying that the errant notifications had been generated due to an error. The company mentioned, “This kind of bug is counter to our intent. We worked quickly to resolve the issue and we apologize to anyone who mistakenly received the notification”.

As per posts on social media, some users were shocked when they were contacted by Facebook as for that moment they started wondering of something dreadful had happened nearby.

Further, the wrong receivers who responded to the notification saying they were OK, their friends on Facebook would’ve have got a message saying they were nearby the atrocity, which caused even more stress.

Josh Wotes, Boston-based Facebook user, was among the ones who received the initial notification. Following the message, he tweeted that luckily he wasn’t anywhere close to the Lahore bombing. Wotes added that Facebook Safety Check made him panic for a moment by making him wonder something has happened nearby.

Generally, the system determines the location of a user through the place listed in the user profile, their previous location if they have chosen Nearby Friends, or the region where they’re using the Internet.