Two weeks ago, Facebook discovered a breach that endangered about 50 million accounts. The security breach has been looked into, and the social media giant has confirmed that over 29 million Facebook accounts were affected.
When the attacked occurred on 28th of September, it was suspected that 50 million accounts could have been hacked. As a security measure, the company reset the access token of about 90 million accounts. This resulted in users having to log in to their Facebook accounts once more.
But now, the exact figures have been released after an extensive analysis of the Facebook hack. The accounts that were hacked were 30 million.
The company also revealed the breakdown of what the hackers were able to access. For 29 million accounts, they were able to access certain types of data but they weren’t able to gain any information from the remaining 1 million accounts.
Facebook’s statement read:
“For 15 million people, attackers accessed two sets of information – name and contact details (phone number, email, or both, depending on what people had on their profiles). For 14 million people, the attackers accessed the same two sets of information, as well as other details people had on their profiles. This included username, gender, locale/language, relationship status, religion, hometown, self-reported current city, birthdate, device types used to access Facebook, education, work, the last 10 places they checked into or were tagged in, website, people or Pages they follow, and the 15 most recent searches. For 1 million people, the attackers did not access any information”
Facebook also revealed that messages will be sent to those users whose accounts were hacked. Facebook wrote:
“In the coming days, we’ll (Facebook) send customised messages to the 30 million people affected to explain what information the attackers might have accessed, as well as steps they can take to help protect themselves, including from suspicious emails, text messages, or calls.”
In the history of Facebook, this is the largest hack ever. The culprits of this Facebook hack nor their location are not known at the moment but the FBI is currently digging into the case with more investigation.
