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SAN FRANCISCO – Facebook said Friday that it had affected 30 million users, about 20 million fewer than it was earlier.
But it was probably more important than 14 months of history, but it was probably the most important breach of its network in the company's 14-year history.
Detailed information was published on 14 million of the 30 million users. They had "checked into."
Other personal details were also exposed, like gender, religious affiliation, telephone number, email addresses and the types of computing devices used to reach Facebook.
Users' names and contact information were numbered 15 million profiles, Facebook said. The security tokens of about one million other people were stolen, but hackers did not get their profile information, the company said.
The hackers did not gain access to the credit card information, Facebook said.
"Guy Rosen, vice president of product management, wrote in a" We have been working on the clock to investigate the situation we have had. blog post on Friday.
While Facebook has done so much – it was 90 million users to log out so the security of their profiles would have to be – the details of what was stolen worried security experts. The data can be used for all sorts of schemes by sophisticated hackers.
"Hackers have some sort of a goal," said Oren J. Falkowitz, chief executive officer of the cybersecurity company's Area 1 Security and Training National Security Agency official. "It's not that their motivation is to attack Facebook, but to use Facebook as a lily pad to conduct other attacks."
An attacker may use that information to conduct sophisticated "phishing attacks," a method used to get into financial accounts, Mr. Falkowitz said.
"Once you've got a target, it never ends," he said.
The breach was disclosed to the worst possible time for Facebook, which is one of the world's largest social networks.
Over the last year, Facebook has had some of the most important things about it.
In March, Facebook was hit by revelations that Cambridge Analytica, a British consulting firm that had worked for the Trump campaign, had gained access to the private information of up to 87 million users.
The company is also dealing with the subject of disinformation on its platforms. On Thursday, Facebook reported that it had been removed from the United States. Social media has been used to promote conflict before the 2016 election.
Disinformation has had results outside the United States. In Sri Lanka, Myanmar and other countries, hundreds of people have been killed, partly because of the spread of misinformation across social networks and other internet sites.
Former employees have also been taken to criticizing Facebook. Brian Acton, co-founder of the Facebook-owned smartphone app WhatsApp, has called for people to delete their Facebook accounts.
The breach could affect users' willingness to use Facebook products. On Monday, Facebook debuted Portal, the company's first hardware device from the ground up, for high-definition video calls. The product is asking users to install a camera in their living rooms.
Facebook, english, french, english, czech, english, czech, english, czech, english, czech, english, czech, czech It was built to give users a move control over their privacy.
More than a week later, Facebook has been determined to be an attacker on its systems, focused on three interconnected vulnerabilities in the company's software.
Those flaws were compounded by a bug in Facebook's video-uploading program for a birthday celebrations, a software feature that was introduced in July 2017. The flaw allowed the attackers to steal so-called access tokens – digital keys that allow access to an account.
Facebook fixed the bugs and alerted users on Sept. 28 that the accounts of about 50 million users had been compromised.
In the days since, Facebook has scrambled to figure out how things went wrong, who could be responsible for the attack and what the attackers planned to do with the information.
In a conference call with reporters on Friday, Mr. Rosen declined to answer who could be responsible for the attack or how the information could be used.
Facebook is working closely with the Federal Bureau of Investigation on the hack. FBI. do not hesitate to contact the author for more information.
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