Just over two weeks after they hacked 50 million Facebook accounts, the company has revealed exactly what information cyber-attackers accessed and allows users to check whether their data was exposed. In this article, we will explain to you how to check if your Facebook account was hacked or not.
Check if your Facebook Account was Hacked
More than two weeks ago Mark Zuckerberg found themselves in a somewhat complicated situation: 50 million Facebook accounts had been hacked due to a vulnerability in the social network code.
The error in the code allowed the cybercriminals to steal Facebook access tokens, that is, the digital keys that keep people connected to the RRSS, preventing them from having to enter their credentials every time they log in. Thus, Facebook solved the problem by closing the session of 90 million accounts at risk to restart the access tokens.
After a week of research, Facebook has revealed the exact number of hacked accounts: 29 million.
They have also published what information the hackers accessed. So far they have been able to verify that the name, email and telephone number of 15 million affected users were exposed.
In the case of the remaining 14 million, they accessed this information in addition to their profile information, being able to see data such as gender, religion, location, device information, locations where they were tagged and pages they had given ‘like ‘. Another million accounts were also affected but, as established from Facebook, they did not get access to their data.
Thus, they have ensured that cyber attackers did not gain access to the user’s password, nor to their credit card information or other payments. They have not seen any signs that they have published information on their profile.
While it is a relief to know that they have not obtained the most sensitive information, users of at least 50 million accounts will be exposed to attacks such as phishing because they have their data and email.
You can also check if your Facebook account was one of those affected by the hack. For this, you have to access the Facebook help centre – click here. Information about the hack will appear as well as a message warning you if you were one of those affected or not.
In case you do, you can not do much. As they explain from Facebook, hackers will no longer have access to your account because they rebooted the access tokens, and you do not have to change your password since they did not access it. However, if you want to stay calm it never hurts to change your password and put a stronger one. Thus, you can also enable authentication in two steps to have greater security in the future.
Remember that it is always important to turn on all the security systems that Facebook has.
If you have any other queries let us know them in the below comment box and we will get back to you to solve all your queries as soon as possible.
