Facebook’s major hack, announced two weeks ago, affected 30 million people, not 50 million as originally feared.
But for about half of those whose accounts were broken into — about 14 million people — the hackers accessed intimate information, such as the last 10 places that person checked into, their current city and their 15 most-recent searches, the company said on Friday in a blog post.
For 15 million, the cyber thieves only accessed name and contact information. The attackers didn’t take any information from about a million people whose accounts were vulnerable.
A smaller slice of people were more heavily affected. About 400 000 people served as the hackers’ entry point to the 30 million others on Facebook. For those 400 000, the attackers could see what the users see as they look at their own profiles. That included posts on their Facebook timelines, and names of recent Facebook Messenger conversations.
The hack, one of the worst in Facebook history, comes at a time when the Menlo Park, California-based social network is desperately trying to regain trust with its users. — Reported by Sarah Frier, (c) 2018 Bloomberg LP
