TechTV | Social Media Giant Facebook Reports 29 Million Users Data Stolen

techtv (51)in #techtv • 6 years ago (edited)

The Cost of Doing Business in a Decentralized World? Your Data.

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In September, Facebook was compromised. Hackers had stolen from the social media giant Facebook "access tokens", essentially a digital key that gives full access to accounts without the use of a password. Originally, the attack was expected to have compromised the data of 50 million people, however sources at Facebook are now claiming only 29 million people were affected.

This is still a dramatic number, given that the hackers had access to things like emails, and phone numbers. An additional 14 million people had even more data compromised such as birth dates, hometowns, and workplaces as well as various search queries and geographical check-ins. Even worse, the hackers were able to steal access tokens from the friends of the accounts compromised.

Facebook claims it is working with the FBI to investigate the attack. This is a heavy blow to the company that recently invoked damage control due to the Cambridge Analytica scandal. Users are starting to wonder if Facebook can be trusted, and many are starting to delete their accounts to avoid this all-together.

According to Facebook, users can check if their information was compromised by visiting the Help Center.

This emphasizes the issues surrounding companies collecting large amounts of data from their users in a centralized manner. The solution is present. Although we cannot prevent attacks entirely, decentralized social media platforms hold the key to fixing issues such as these, and add an extra layer of security to give their users peace of mind.

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