The hackers also tried to harvest people's private information, including name, sex and hometown, from Facebook's systems. The unknown attackers took advantage of a feature in the code called 'Access Tokens,' to take over people's accounts, potentially giving hackers access to private messages, photos and posts - although Facebook said there was no evidence that had been done.

September 2018: Facebook disclosed that it had been hit by its worst ever data breach, affecting 50 million users - including those of Zuckerberg and COO Sheryl Sandberg.Īttackers exploited the site's 'View As' feature, which lets people see what their profiles look like to other users.įacebook (file image) made headlines in March 2018 after the data of 87 million users was improperly accessed by Cambridge Analytica, a political consultancy It also allowed Microsoft's search engine, known as Bing, to see the name of all Facebook users' friends without their consent.Īmazon was allowed to obtain users' names and contact information through their friends, and Yahoo could view streams of friends' posts. Some of these 'partners' had the ability to read, write, and delete Facebook users' private messages and to see all participants on a thread. Zuckerberg promised end-to-end encryption for all of its messaging services, which will be combined in a way that allows users to communicate across WhatsApp, Instagram Direct, and Facebook Messenger.ĭecember 2018: Facebook comes under fire after a bombshell report discovered the firm allowed over 150 companies, including Netflix, Spotify and Bing, to access unprecedented amounts of user data, such as private messages. March 2019: Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg promised to rebuild based on six 'privacy-focused' principles: July 2019: Facebook data scandal: Social network is fined $5billion over 'inappropriate' sharing of users' personal information April 2020: Facebook hackers leaked phone numbers and personal data from 553 million users online.

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