Facebook revealed more information about the security issue that affected the privacy of many Facebook user’s information. The update provided by Facebook includes unsettling news.

Facebook now says that out of the 50 million people whose access tokens were affected by the security issue, they believe that about 30 million people actually had their tokens stolen. I’m not sure if Facebook thought this news would be reassuring – but it obviously isn’t. The additional details provided by Facebook aren’t good news, either.

For 15 million people, attackers accessed two sets of information – name and contact details (phone number, email, or both, depending on what people had in 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.

The “other details” included information such as: 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.

Facebook also said for 1 million people who were affected by the data breach, “the attackers did not access any information”.

This is a very big deal! Some of the information that was stolen is used in security questions on things like bank accounts, credit cards, and to access a person’s health information. Facebook can’t fix this. Personally, I would not be surprised if this awful situation results in a massive number of people deleting their Facebook accounts.

Image from Pixabay

Facebook announced today that it removed 559 Pages and 251 accounts “that have consistently broken our rules against spam and coordinated inauthentic behavior”. The post was written by Facebook’s Head of Cybersecurity Policy Nathaniel Gleicher and Project Manager Oscar Rodriguez.

The behaviors that caused Facebook to remove 559 Pages and 251 accounts are not new. Facebook says that this type of spam is often used to “hawk fraudulent products like fake sunglasses or weight loss ‘remedies’.” It can also be celebrity gossip.

Today, Facebook says it is seeing these networks “increasingly use sensational political content – regardless of its political slant – to build an audience and drive traffic to their websites, earning money for every visitor to the site.” Facebook pointed out:

This is why it’s so important we look at these actors’ behavior – such as whether they’re using fake accounts or repeatedly posting spam – rather than their content when deciding which of these accounts, Pages, or Groups to remove.

Facebook has every right to remove Pages and accounts that violate their rules. Personally, I think Facebook could have made more of an impact if they removed the spammers earlier, instead of a few weeks before the United States midterm elections. The damage caused by spreading misinformation has already been done.

It’s good that Facebook attempted to clarify that the Pages and accounts were removed because of their behaviors. Even so, I believe there will be individuals who spend today filling their social media accounts with accusations that Facebook is biased against their preferred political party.