Facebook says it stored millions of passwords in plain text | CBC News

"There is no valid reason why anyone in an organization, especially the size of Facebook, needs to have access to users' passwords in plain text."

But the incident reveals a huge oversight for the company amid a slew of bruises and stumbles in the last couple of years.

Facebook Lite is designed for users with older phones or low-speed internet connections and is used primarily in developing countries.

He said he's seen a number of instances where much smaller organizations made such information readily available not just to programmers but also to customer support teams.

Speaking to CBC News' MeeganRead, security researcher Chester Wisniewskiat Sophos in Vancouver, said he was "a little bit astounded" at this news.

If indeed thousands of employees accessed the data set, said Wisniewski, it seems unlikely that none of them would have alerted the company's leaders.

"You can't trust what companies are doing with your password, and when news like this comes out no matter what you're hearing change your password now."

To encourage thoughtful and respectful conversations, first and last names will appear with each submission to CBC/Radio-Canada's online communities .

It is a priority for CBC to create a website that is accessible to all Canadians including people with visual, hearing, motor and cognitive challenges.

Original article
Author: Cbc

Canada's home for News, Entertainment, Sports, Music and much more

Cbc has recently written 10 articles on similar topics including :
  1. "Facebook promised to open a data centre in Canada to create jobs, in exchange for the federal government offering assurances that it would not impose its jurisdiction over the company's non-Canadian data". (March 4, 2019)
  2. "Facebook knew as early as 2018 that its platform was being used to incite division and violence, a company official told MPs in Ottawa on Thursday". (June 6, 2019)
  3. "Facebook says it is aware of outages on its platforms including Facebook, Messenger and Instagram and is working to resolve the issue". (March 14, 2019)
  4. "Facebook's lead regulator in the European Union is seeking information over how it handled data during the manual transcription of users' audio recordings, Ireland's Data Protection Commision said on Wednesday". (August 14, 2019)
  5. "Facebook Inc. said on Wednesday it is working to resolve issues faced by some users while sending media files on its social media platforms including WhatsApp and Instagram". (July 3, 2019)
  6. "A London, Ont., homicide case could help determine how far into your Facebook inbox the arm of the law could reach for investigative purposes". (May 27, 2019)
  7. "Canadian MPs are warning that Facebook's top officials could be found in contempt of Parliament if they continue to ignore a subpoena to testify in Ottawa this week". (May 27, 2019)
  8. "In an opinion piece in the Washington Post, Mark Zuckerberg said governments and regulators, rather than private companies like Facebook, should be more active in policing the Internet". (April 1, 2019)
  9. "Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp were temporarily down early Sunday. All three social media platforms, including Facebook Messenger, were affected by the outage". (April 14, 2019)
  10. "Facebook is extending its ban on hate speech to prohibit the promotion and support of white nationalism and white separatism". (March 27, 2019)
Posted on  , ,