Facebook says it won’t protect victims of identity fraud

Facebook has said it will not provide protection for victims of identity fraud in its latest data breach.

Facebook had said on Friday that 14 million users had highly personal information stolen by hackers.

The information stolen included search history, location data and information about relationships, religion and more.

Facebook however said it does not plan to provide protection services for users, unlike other major hacks involving big companies.

An analyst however told BBC that the decision was “unconscionable”.

“This kind of information could help thieves create social engineering-based theft programmes, preying on the Facebook hack victims,” said Patrick Moorhead, from Moor Insights and Strategy.

For the most severely impacted users – a group of around 14 million, Facebook said – the stolen data included “username, gender, locale/language, relationship status, religion, hometown, self-reported current city, birthdate, device types used to access Facebook, education, work, the last 10 places they checked into or were tagged in, website, people or pages they follow, and the 15 most recent searches”.

A Facebook spokeswoman told the BBC it would not be taking this step “at this time”, adding that users would instead be directed to the website’s help section.

Read also: Facebook moves to address online bullying, harassment

“The resources we are pointing people toward are based on the actual types of data accessed – including the steps they can take to help protect themselves from suspicious emails, text messages, or calls,” the spokeswoman said.

She did not however say if the help pages in question had been updated since the company discovered the recent breach.

It would be recalled that Facebook had said  on October 5 that it feared 50million users had been affected. The figure was reviewed downward on Friday to about 30 million.

“We have not ruled out the possibility of smaller-scale attacks, which we’re continuing to investigate,” Facebook’s head of product management, Guy Rosen, wrote in a blog post.

 

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