Even though the dust on the data selling row involving Cambridge Analytica hasn’t yet settled, another setback seems to have jolted Facebook. Following the sensational report that hackers stole data from 30 million users, most of you would want to check out if your Facebook data was hacked in the security breach.
The social networking giant has come up with a tool that makes it easier to find out if the personal data of a Facebook account has been obtained. Besides, the social networking company has also reported that it’s going to send notifications to the affected users.
If this unfortunate news has sent shivers down your spine and you want to quickly find out whether your account is safe or not, run through the quick below steps!
Check Out If Your Facebook Data Was included in the Latest Security Breach
According to the report, while the users’ names & contact info of 15M accounts were stolen, the bios of 14M accounts were obtained. And the access token of 1 million accounts was taken away.
Step #1. Be sure you are already logged into your Facebook account. Open a web browser and visit this webpage.
Step #2. Next, scroll down to the section reading “Is my Facebook account impacted by this security issue?”
Here, Facebook will provide information regarding whether your account has been hacked or not.
If your account hasn’t been compromised, you may see a message like the one mentioned below.
“Based on what we’ve learned so far, your Facebook account has not been impacted by this security incident. If we find more Facebook accounts were impacted, we will reset their access tokens and notify those accounts.”
If your account has been hacked, Facebook will show the information that was accessed.
Your account may belong to one of the below categories:
- As per the social networking company, the name, email and phone number of 15 million users were hacked.
- The hackers accessed the bios including the username, gender, locale/language, relationship status, religion, hometown, current city, birthdate, device types used to access Facebook, education, work, the last 10 checked or tagged, website, 15 most recent searches, followed pages, etc. from 14 million accounts.
- Attackers could obtain the access token from 1 million accounts. However, they couldn’t steal the account information using the access token.
Note: If your account has been affected, you should see a warning at the at the top of your News Feed: It will explain what type of information was accessed from your account.
What If Your Facebook Account Has Been Hacked?
If your account has been affected, you should guard against spam calls, emails and messages. Besides, if you had added your credit card information, make sure to contact your bank to add an additional safeguard for it.
Want to Protect Your Facebook Account from Hacking? Follow These Effective Tricks
There are a few helpful ways through which you can safeguard your account against hacking. And one of them is to get alerts about the unrecognized logins. Once enabled, Facebook will send you a notification whenever a login request is received from an unusual device or browser.
On your iPhone or Android Phone
To do so, open Facebook on your device and then tap on the menu button. Next, tap on Settings & Privacy → Settings → Security and Login.
Now, scroll down to Setting Up Extra Security and tap on Get alerts about unrecognized logins. Up next, you have three options: Get Facebook notification, Messenger notification, and email alert. Turn on the alert as per your need.
On your computer
Open Facebook → Click on the tiny arrow in the upper right-hand corner of the screen → Settings from the menu.
On the left-hand side of the screen, click on Security and Login.
Head to Setting up extra security section and then click on Edit next to Get alerts about unrecognized logins.
Next up, turn on the Get notifications and click on Save Changes to confirm.
Another simple yet effective way of preventing account hacking is to keep track of logged in locations. You can quickly check the history of your recent activity. This way you will be able to quickly find out the unusual Facebook session.
On your computer, open Facebook and click on the tiny arrow at the top right corner → Settings → Security and Login → Where you’re logged in. Now, check out both your active and recent Facebook sessions.
Take Advantage of Two-Factor Authentication for Facebook
Two-factor authentication can be enormously helpful in preventing others from having access to your Facebook account. And you should always take advantage of it to offer an additional layer of safeguard to your account. To get it done, follow this complete guide.
Signing Off…
Though the reported hacking of 30 million accounts is less than the estimated 50 million accounts, it’s good enough to make users lose their sleep.
Fortunately, Facebook has swung into action in time and already invalidated the access tokens of around 90 million accounts that were affected vulnerability.
We expect the social networking giant to implement stringent security measures to safeguard the users’ personal information against hacking.
Take a close look at the following posts as well:
- Hide Facebook Profile from Search Engines on iPhone
- Best social media apps for iPhone and iPad
- Deactivate or Delete Your Facebook Account on iPhone
What’s your take on the sensational hacking of millions of Facebook accounts? Shoot your thoughts in comment section.
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