Facebook reveals a hack on 50 million accounts

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Facebook has discovered a security flaw affecting about 50 million user accounts which could have allowed attackers to take over those accounts, the social networking company said on Friday.

Facebook revealing a hack — that exposed almost 50 million accounts.

The social media giant on Friday saying its team discovered a security breach earlier this week.

The ‘View As’ feature – that shows what your account looks like to the public – had a vulnerability in its code, which allowed hackers to break in.

Facebook says it turned off the view as feature for now and it reset those 50 million accounts and another 40 million just to be safe – that means those users will have to use their passwords to log back into their accounts.

As it only just started its investigation, Facebook said it hasn’t figured out if any of these accounts were misused or information accessed. And it doesn’t know who’s behind the attack or where they’re based.

The news comes at a tough time for Facebook already struggling with the fall out from an earlier data privacy scandal involving the political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica and criticism that it didn’t do enough to prevent the alleged Russian government meddling in the 2016 presidential election.

And along with other social media companies, Facebook has been working to guard against any political inteferences on its platform with rising concern about attempts to disrupt the November U.S. mid-term elections.

The news hit Facebook shares which dropped over 3 percent on Friday afternoon trading.

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