Data breach hits nearly 50 million Facebook users

MENLO PARK, Calif. – Nearly 50 million Facebook user accounts may have been compromised in a massive data breach.

According to Facebook Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, an engineering team discovered an attacker exploited a vulnerability problem with the “View As” feature on September 25. This feature allows users to view their own profile as it would look to other people. Facebook has since temporarily disabled this feature as a precaution.

Facebook doesn’t know if the almost 50 million vulnerable accounts were actually misused.

As an additional precaution, users who activated the “View As” feature were logged out by the social media company. They may have to log back into their accounts, Zuckerberg said.

“We face constant attacks from people who want to take over accounts or steal information around the world,” Zuckerberg wrote on a Facebook post about the incident. “While I’m glad we found this, fixed the vulnerability, and secured the accounts that may be at risk, the reality is we need to continue developing new tools to prevent this from happening in the first place. If you’ve forgotten your password or are having trouble logging in, you can access your account through the Help Center.”

For more information about the breach, visit https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2018/09/security-update/