Facebook Data Breach Announcement

Facebook recently announced that a previously unnoticed vulnerability in their site code has led to a hack of nearly 30 million accounts. Hackers were able to steal users’ access tokens, allowing them to stay logged onto the platform for months at a time.

Hackers had access to sets of information including:

• Name and contact details (phone number, email, or both, depending on what people had on their profiles)
• 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
• The 15 most recent searches

This massive hack is yet another reminder of the fact that the private and sensitive data we share online might not always remain that way.

Data breaches in recent months are arming online fraudsters with a wealth of information, and incidents like this one not only compromise the privacy of the account holders, but they also pose a serious threat to online merchants.