A sudden Facebook app crash on Sept. 28, which resulted in 50 million users being logged out of their account, and 40 million accounts are likely to be affected. Facebook has acknowledged a security flaw in one of the privacy features of the profile, allowing hackers to access millions of accounts.
The site has already acknowledged a loophole in the "View As" code, which allows people to see how their profiles appear to others. The hacking process relied on errors in the "View As" feature, where hackers used this vulnerability to steal distinct access codes from people whose searches indicated they had used the feature, allowing them to access user accounts by acquiring privileged access codes.
This loophole has occurred a year ago inadvertently with the feature of uploading video on Facebook, but it has been discovered now, and then began to investigate.
For Facebook users, they may not need to sign in to their account every time they sign out, because Facebook has reset access codes.
The company promised that a notice would be sent to the users explaining the errors that occurred with Facebook. "Once users have re-logged in, they will be notified of what actually happened," said Guy Rosen, vice president of product management at Facebook.
This breakthrough (or "security problem" as described by Facebook) came at a very bad time for the company, where it is said that a federal investigation (which may include FBI, SEC, FTC and DOJ in the US) examines how Facebook handles private data that Cambridge used analtica to help influence voters in the 2016 US presidential election. Some politicians are already demanding new regulations.
This week, it was revealed that Facebook had used users 'phone numbers for advertising purposes, and another investigation showed how Facebook users could inadvertently exploit all their friends' advertising data.
