Facebook said Friday that they experienced an attack on their computer networks that exposed the personal data of almost 50 million users.
“I’m glad we found this," Facebook’s chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said in a press call this afternoon. "But it definitely is an issue that this happened in the first place.”
You may have been asked to log into your Facebook account at some point today. That's because Facebook logged out over 90 million users in an effort to re-establish control over potentially compromised accounts as a precaution. Facebook has also temporarily disabled the "View As" feature.
Though Facebook has said they do not currently know the cause of the breach, they are beginning an investigation into the matter. As of now, Facebook is yet to determine whether affected accounts were misused in any way but the company says that it has notified law enforcement.
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"We’re working hard to better understand these details — and we will update this post when we have more information, or if the facts change," Facebook said. "In addition, if we find more affected accounts, we will immediately reset their access tokens."
Things haven't been looking good for Facebook lately on the privacy and security front, and this new data breach is certainly not likely to help. The tech giant is currently under investigation by multiple agencies, including the Securities and Exchange Commission, for their data sharing practices. The company has also recently come under attack for involvement in other discriminatory practices.
For now, Facebook says there is no need for users to change their passwords. For anyone having trouble logging back into Facebook, there is help available at Facebook's Help Center. As for those who want to take further precautions by logging out of Facebook, they can visit the “Security and Login” section in settings, which lists all of the places where users are logged in and offers an option to log out of them all in one click.
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