Facebook Reveals More Details About Its Recent Security Breach Affecting 30 Million Users

Last updated July 12, 2021
Written by:
Nitish Singh
Image Courtesy of Facebook

Facebook has been at the receiving end of a number of security breaches and controversies. The social media company has been having a rough year with the Cambridge Analytica scandal raising concerns about online security all over the world and a long string of controversies followed.

The most recent incident involving Facebook has to do with a security breach that was initially reported to have claimed the personal data of up to 50 million users. However, after investigating the security flaw, the social media giant has confirmed that 30 million users have been affected.

Attackers managed to steal authentication tokens of the affected 30 million users which may lead to personal information being stolen. Facebook is currently working with the FBI to find the attackers and bring them to justice. After investigating, it has been found that 15 million users had their names and contact details harvested by hackers while another 14 million users had their name, gender, language, relationship status and other details from their Facebook accounts stolen. Users will soon be receiving personalized messages from the social media platform in the future to be notified if they have been affected by the incident.

All tokens that were stolen from the platform have been invalidated on September 28, and so far no evidence about the stolen tokens being used has been found. VP of Product Management Guy Rosen revealed the roadmap for rectifying the data breach stating “As we look for other ways the people behind this attack used Facebook, as well as the possibility of smaller-scale attacks, we’ll continue to cooperate with the FBI, the US Federal Trade Commission, Irish Data Protection Commission, and other authorities.”

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