On Friday, Facebook announced there was a security breach that put 50 million users’ personal data at risk.
According to Facebook, they noticed an attack earlier this week and saw attackers, who Facebook hasn’t identified yet, had successfully taken over users’ accounts.
According to Facebook, the attackers had taken advantage of a feature that allows users to view their own profile as if they were someone else, which was made in order to help protect people’s privacy. Facebook is currently in the initial stages of the investigation and doesn’t know the full range of the attack.
If you were one of the 90 million people who were logged out of Facebook yesterday and asked to log back in, it’s part of a security measure taken by Facebook to prevent further risks. The breach has since been fixed, and the company is working to see how to prevent similar incidents in the future, but 50 million users’ data remains compromised.
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg said:
“We’re taking it really seriously. We have a major security effort at the company that hardens all of our surfaces. I’m glad we found this. But it definitely is an issue that this happened in the first place.”
Facebook continues to deal with the fallout of the improper data harvesting Cambridge Analytica scandal and the 2016 presidential election in which a Russian propaganda group manipulated users in order to influence the election. The government is currently considering if Facebook should be regulated because of the amount of data and the massive influence it has.
Earlier this year, Zuckerberg said, “We have a responsibility to protect your data, and if we can’t then we don’t deserve to serve you.”
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