Facebook say 50 million accounts affected after major security breach and 90 million accounts may have to take action
ADVERTISEMENTFacebook has announced that a security breach has affected 50 million accounts.
The attack allowed hackers to "take over people's accounts".
In a statement by Guy Rosen, the VP of Product Management, Rosen stated that the company is "taking this incredibly seriously" and that they have taken "immediate action" to "protect people’s security".
The breach relates to the "View As" feature, which allows users to view their page from the perspective of another user.
As a "precautionary step", the company have asked an additional 40 million users to log back into their Facebook account while temporarily disabling the "View As" feature.
The statement said that Facebook is in the early stages of the investigation, and will update its users once they "better understand these details".
Concluding the statement, Rosen said that "people’s privacy and security is incredibly important, and we’re sorry this happened. It’s why we’ve taken immediate action to secure these accounts and let users know what happened".
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg weighed in, releasing a statement on the platform. Zuckerberg said that the breach allowed hackers to "log into about 50 million people's accounts". The company CEO gave assurances that Facebook has "taken a number of steps to address this issue".
This news follows a tumultuous year for the company, who found themselves answering questions to the US Senate over the Russian involvement in the 2016 election.