HACKERS RAID 50M FACEBOOK ACCOUNTS
Addresses, email accounts and bank details at risk in web giant’s latest PR disaster
AT LEAST 50million Facebook users have had their accounts hacked by criminals.
The attack has put at risk personal data including home addresses, email accounts and even bank details. The hackers took advantage of a security flaw to effectively take control of tens of millions of Facebook profiles including many belonging to Britons.
The social media giant found out about the attack on Tuesday but kept the information from the public until last night.
It has logged 50million victims out of their accounts, making them log back in again with their passwords.
As a precautionary measure, another 40million users will be asked to do the same.
The hackers broke in using flaws in a video tool and the ‘view as’ feature, which allows customers to test out their profiles. It has now been disabled.
It is the latest PR disaster for
the US firm following the revelation that the personal information of 87million users was harvested by a data company that used it to help Donald Trump win the US presidency.
An American investigation then found that agents from Russia and elsewhere had been posting fake political adverts on Facebook since at least 2016.
Silkie Carlo, of the campaign group Big Brother Watch, said: ‘This hack is of an unimaginable scale. Facebook is harvesting, selling and now losing highly sensitive information about the private lives of millions of people all around the world. It is a complete disgrace.
‘This year has become an omnishambles for Facebook, but it’s users who are paying the real price. We hope the information commissioner will take robust action, but more importantly that Facebook’s users seriously consider their use of the platform.’
Facebook bosses were forced to call in the FBI and last night shares in the company fell more than 3 per cent in New York, wiping £12billion off its value.
Following the data breach, a British user was sent a message, saying: ‘To protect your security, we may have recently logged you out of your Facebook account.
‘We don’t know yet if anyone’s Facebook information was accessed, but we wanted to let you know what we’re doing to protect your account. We’re continuing to investigate the situation and have informed law enforcement.’
A spokesman for the firm, which has two billion users, said it spotted the problem following a spike in suspicious activity on Tuesday and fixed the flaw that evening. It realised that attackers were breaking into the website to grab users’ profile information. Scores of British users reported that they had been forced to log back into their accounts.
In a statement last night, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg admitted the breach was serious. The 34-year-old billionaire added: ‘We face constant attack from people who want to take over accounts. We need to do more to prevent this from happening in the first place.’
Adam French, of the consumer group Which?, said: ‘Facebook’s data breach will deeply concern users. It is critical that the company does all that it can to ensure affected people get clear information about what has happened and assists anyone negatively impacted.
‘Anyone concerned they could be at risk as a result of the hack should consider changing their password, monitor bank and other online accounts and be wary of emails regarding the breach as scammers may try to take advantage of it.’
Facebook said that no files containing credit or debit card data were accessed by the hackers. But users may have posted messages containing bank details – and these were at risk of being stolen.