Our modern life is ruled by social media. Just about whatever we do, we tend to upload it on various social media platforms, which means most of our personal details and lives are shared on social media. And what if someone has access to your account? Well, with wrong intentions a person with access to your social media account can potentially jeopardize your social life and do a lot of damage by gaining your personal data.
Now, here’s another reason why you should not really be too fond of social media. Facebook, the largest social network platform in the globe has leaked out millions of user passwords owing to a company error. Facebook has admitted that millions of user passwords were stored on its internal servers in plain text, which were accessible by thousands of Facebook employees all the time.
This is scary news, and here’s all that you should know:
Millions of account passwords were stored in plain text and could be searchable by thousands of people working for Facebook.
Around 200 million to as many as 600 million Facebook users are thought to have been affected by the latest security breach.
Apart from Facebook, Instagram accounts passwords also affected by this security flaw.
The exact number of users affected is not yet known, but archives with unencrypted passwords that were discovered date back to 2012.
As per a company statement, Facebook will be notifying this password security breach to hundreds of millions of Facebook Lite users, tens of millions of regular Facebook users and tens of thousands of Instagram users.
Dos and Don’ts for Facebook and Instagram users:
- All Facebook and Instagram users should change their passwords as soon as possible (read – right away).
- Facebook and Instagram users should not be same passwords across different platforms, and have very unique passwords for each platform.
- Facebook says that the users should choose strong and complex passwords for each of their accounts.
- Facebook has also said that the users should think about enabling a security key or two-factor authentication for your account protection.
