Last month, Facebook announced a security incident in a blog post revealing that they had stored user passwords in plain text. The initial report stated that the incident affected hundreds of millions of Facebook users and “tens of thousands” of Instagram users.
4 days ago, Facebook made a silent update to its original blog post. In the update, they revealed that their previous estimate was incorrect. The number of Instagram users affected was no longer in the tens of thousands but now in the millions.
“Since this post was published, we discovered additional logs of Instagram passwords being stored in a readable format. We now estimate that this issue impacted millions of Instagram users. We will be notifying these users as we did the others. Our investigation has determined that these stored passwords were not internally abused or improperly accessed”
The passwords were not accessible to anyone outside of the company. However, around 2,000 internal employees had access to the passwords. Facebook is yet to reveal the exact number of affected users. They have not disclosed any information on how this bug occurred.
What This Means For The Digital You
Any time you place your information online you are placing it at risk.
So what can you do outside of stopping your involvement with online services? For starters, make sure you are following our blog so you stay up-to-date on what is happening in all areas involving the Digital You.
Remember, that even when you take precautions, your information could still end up in marketplaces on the Dark Web.
With ScoresMatter, you can scan the Dark Web and see if criminals are trading or selling your personal details. You can also learn what you can do if we do find your information on the Dark Web.
Protect the Digital You at ScoresMatter today.