Facebook is at risk of data loss: this is not a hypothesis but what Symantec, a company active in IT security, has discovered. The focus is on a bug related to personal data released to third parties.
More privacy issues for Facebook, this time in the eye of the storm due to a discovery made by Symantec, a company specializing in IT security products.
It has been discovered that users’ personal data has been accidentally available to so-called “third parties” and especially advertisers for a long time.
Approximately 100,000 applications available on Facebook for at least the past 4 years could have freely accessed personal photos, chats, and profiles, through the “temporary key” assigned by Facebook each time a user decides to use an application.
Facebook, after receiving a report from Symantec, verified the situation: indeed, some data leakage has occurred, but as of now, it does not appear that advertisers have taken any action using this personal data.
In any case, Facebook has decided to eliminate the “obsolete” APIs still present on the social network, as a precautionary measure. There should be no problems with the use of more recent APIs, i.e., those that pass through the OAUTH2.0 authentication system.
It should be emphasized that Symantec itself, while highlighting the risk of data leakage, was keen to specify that it appears very likely that third parties did not understand that they could freely access certain subscriber data.
Danger averted? For the moment, it seems so, at least according to official statements.
However, when it comes to sharing personal data, no corporate reassurance can be relied upon: it is better to carefully evaluate the applications to use and perhaps – just to be on the safe side – it is better to change your password if it is old.
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