Facebook has just announced that almost 50 million accounts have been left exposed due to a security breach, and up to 90 million accounts will be affected in total.
Facebook have just announced "If you've been logged out of your account and asked to sign back in, it’s because we've discovered a security issue and are taking immediate action to protect people on Facebook".
In a security update, Guy Rosen, VP of Product Management stated:
"On the afternoon of Tuesday, September 25, our engineering team discovered a security issue affecting almost 50 million accounts. We’re taking this incredibly seriously and wanted to let everyone know what’s happened and the immediate action we’ve taken to protect people’s security.
"Here is the action we have already taken. First, we’ve fixed the vulnerability and informed law enforcement.
Second, we have reset the access tokens of the almost 50 million accounts we know were affected to protect their security. We’re also taking the precautionary step of resetting access tokens for another 40 million accounts that have been subject to a “View As” look-up in the last year. As a result, around 90 million people will now have to log back in to Facebook, or any of their apps that use Facebook Login. After they have logged back in, people will get a notification at the top of their News Feed explaining what happened."
Although Facebook have reassured users that there is no need to change their passwords, many users will do just that in an extra affort to protect their accounts.
The statement ends with the following advice for users: "There’s no need for anyone to change their passwords. But people who are having trouble logging back into Facebook — for example because they’ve forgotten their password — should visit our Help Center. And if anyone wants to take the precautionary action of logging out of Facebook, they should visit the “Security and Login” section in settings. It lists the places people are logged into Facebook with a one-click option to log out of them all."
You can read the full statement here* along with advice if you are having trouble logging back into your account.
This is a breaking news story, and we will update with more as it comes in.
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