The good news: Facebook downgrades the number of accounts hit in the breach they disclosed two weeks ago to 29 million, down from 50 million. The bad news: Uh, that's still a LOT. And if you were one of those 29 million Facebook users, A LOT of your intimate personal data was stolen.
Facebook disclosed this in a corporate blog post, "An Update on the Security Issue," with more details on the massive privacy breach.
Facebook Product Management VP Guy Rosen says:
People can check whether they were affected by visiting our Help Center. In the coming days, we'll send customized messages to the 30 million people affected to explain what information the attackers might have accessed, as well as steps they can take to help protect themselves, including from suspicious emails, text messages, or calls.
This attack did not include Messenger, Messenger Kids, Instagram, WhatsApp, Oculus, Workplace, Pages, payments, third-party apps, or advertising or developer accounts.
Naturally they published at the end of the day on Friday, when all bad news gets dumped to minimize impact.
"For 15 million people, attackers accessed two sets of information — name and contact details (phone number, email, or both, depending on what people had on their profiles)," writes Rosen in the post.
"For 14 million people, the attackers accessed the same two sets of information, as well as other details people had on their profiles."
Bu "other details," he means your location, gender, relationship status, your recent search and personal physical location data. Read the rest
