Facebook pays $10,000 to 10-year-old Instagram hacker

HELSINKI: Social media giant Facebook has paid a $10,000 reward to a 10-year-old Finnish boy for finding a glitch in its picture sharing app Instagram.

Jani, whose last name was not released for privacy reasons, is the youngest ever recipient of Facebook´s "bug bounty", paid to users who find bugs or weaknesses in its platforms.

"I wanted to see if Instagram´s comment field could stand malicious code. Turns out it couldn´t," Jani told Finland´s Iltalehti newspaper.

Facebook said the glitch was fixed in February and the reward was paid in March.

Jani, who is still too young to have a Facebook or Instagram account of his own, said he learned coding from Youtube videos and found a way to delete user comments from Instagram accounts.

"I could have deleted anyone´s comments from there. Even Justin Bieber´s," he told Iltalehti.

He said he was thinking about a career in data security, but for now his plans include buying a new bike and a football with his reward money.