TechDayLife

Facebook recently suffered a massive breach of login tokens that posed a risk to 50 million accounts all over the world. A recent article by The Independent reveals that the hacked data is available on Dark Web and can be grabbed for as low as $3.90. Related:  Do you know everything about Facebook's data breach affecting 50M USERS? There are many listings found the Dark Web that are offering users’ personal data for low prices. Such listings are featured on popular dark web marketplaces such as Dream Market. What makes the issue more pressing is the fact that the listing has been posted by trusted sellers which nearly confirms the authenticity of the data. Dream market uses a rating system akin to other online retailers such as Amazon and eBay, and sellers are rated according to their authenticity. Related:  Facebook's Breach will be Forgotten? DATA is Misused. However, the marketplace does not accept cash or online payment. Those who need to purchase the facebook’s hac...

By Josh Constine on Oct 4 This is sure to exacerbate fears that Facebook will further exploit Instagram now that its founders have resigned. Instagram has been spotted prototyping a new privacy setting that would allow it to share your location history with Facebook. That means your exact GPS coordinates collected by Instagram, even when you’re not using the app, would help Facebook to target you with ads and recommend you relevant content. The geo-tagged data would appear to users in their Facebook Profile’s Activity Log, which include creepy daily maps of the places you been. This commingling of data could upset users who want to limit Facebook’s surveillance of their lives. With Facebook installing its former VP of News Feed and close friend of Mark Zuckerberg, Adam Mosseri, as the head of Instagram, some critics have worried that Facebook would attempt to squeeze more value out of Instagram. Tat includes driving referral traffic to the main app via spammy notifications, in...

By Devin Coldewey on Oct 1, 2018 Another day, another announcement from Facebook that it has failed to protect your personal information. Were you one of the 50 million (and likely far more, given the company’s graduated disclosure style) users whose accounts were completely exposed by a coding error in play for more than a year? If not, don’t worry — you’ll get your turn being failed by Facebook . It’s incapable of keeping its users safe. Facebook has proven over and over again that it prioritizes its own product agenda over the safety and privacy of its users. And even if it didn’t, the nature and scale of its operations make it nearly impossible to avoid major data breaches that expose highly personal data. For one thing, the network has grown so large that its surface area is impossible to secure completely. That was certainly demonstrated Friday when it turned out that a feature rollout had let hackers essentially log in as millions of users and do who knows what....

By Russell Brandom on Oct 1, 2018 On Friday, a massive breach opened up a new front in the war on Facebook. According the the company, more than 50 million accounts were taken over by a kind of login worm, which used a series of unpublished vulnerabilities to hijack session keys on an unprecedented scale. Hackers had full access to any of the targeted accounts — essentially, they could do whatever you can do when you’re logged in — and Facebook is still working to survey the full extent of the damage. Breach response is always chaotic, but this one is particularly haphazard because of a new set of rules established by the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation or GDPR. Implemented in May, the GDPR sets strict requirements for any breach involving EU citizens, requirements that are already guiding Facebook’s response to the session key attack. According to Facebook’s timeline, the disclosure on Friday came just before the 72-hour window for disclosing the news to privacy commissioners,...

By Josh Constine on Sep 30 We cared about Cambridge Analytica because it could have helped elect Trump. We ignored LocationSmart because even the though the company was selling and exposing the real-time GPS coordinates of our phones, it was never clear exactly if or how that data was misused. This idea, that privacy issues are abstract concepts for most people until they become security or ideological problems, is important to understanding Facebook’s  massive breach revealed this week.  The social network’s engineering was sloppy, allowing three bugs to be combined to steal the access tokens of 50 million people. In pursuit of rapid growth at affordable efficiency, Facebook failed to protect its users. This assessment doesn’t discount that. Facebook screwed up big time. But despite the potential that those access tokens could have let the attackers take over user accounts, act as them, and scrape their personal info, it’s unclear how much users really care. That’s be...

By Micah Singleton on Sep 28 If you’ve finally given up on the world’s most popular social media network — be it from the Cambridge Analytica scandal or today’s news that unknown hackers stole access to 50 million accounts — it’s not too complicated to remove yourself from the service. But before you delete all of those pictures, posts, and Likes, you should download your personal information from Facebook first. Your Facebook archives contain just about  all of the pertinent information related to your account , including your photos, active sessions, chat history, IP addresses, facial recognition data, and which ads you clicked, just to name a few. That’s a ton of personal information that you should probably maintain access to. To download your archive, go to “Settings” and click “Download a copy of your Facebook data” at the bottom of General Account Settings, and then click “Start My Archive.” After you’ve finished downloading your archive, you can now delete your accou...

By Sarah Perez & Zack Whittaker on Sep 28 Facebook is cleaning up after a major security incident exposed the account data of millions of users. What’s already been a rocky year after the Cambridge Analytica scandal, the company is scrambling to regain its users trust after another security incident exposed user data. Here’s everything you need to know so far. What happened? Facebook says at least 50 million users’ data were confirmed at risk after attackers exploited a vulnerability that allowed them access to personal data. The company also preventively secure 40 million additional accounts out of an abundance of caution. What data were the hackers after? Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that the company has not seen any accounts compromised and improperly accessed — although it’s early days and that may change. But Zuckerberg said that the attackers were using Facebook developer APIs to obtain some information, like “name, gender, and hometowns” that’s linked to a ...

The Facebook exodus among young people is real, and disenchantment with the leading social media platform is extending to older users, too. According to new data from Pew Research Center that sampled US Facebook users aged 18 and up, 4 in 10 (42 percent) of those surveyed have taken a break from the social network for “several weeks or more” in the last year; a quarter of respondents said they’ve deleted the mobile app entirely from their smartphones and move to Snapchat, YouTube and  Cuckoo . Pew’s survey was conducted between May 29th and June 11th, so the burnout and frustrations stemming from Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica privacy scandal were still fresh in the minds of users. But it’s an alarming sign that shows people have a bad taste in their mouths from Facebook after months hearing about privacy mishaps, election meddling, misinformation campaigns, and questionable moderation practices. Today, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg is testifying bef...