READ: Facebook staff had access to hundreds of millions of people’s passwords
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, March 22) — Facebook has failed to convince the country’s privacy body that there is nothing to worry about after millions of its users’ passwords were mishandled and stored in readable formats.
In a statement on Friday, the National Privacy Commission (NPC) said it met with a Facebook official who reaffirmed the social media giant’s earlier statement that there was no evidence that anyone internally abused or improperly accessed the sensitive information.
But Privacy Commissioner Raymund Enriquez Liboro said, “Even if there is shown to be no evidence of abuse, there is little comfort in knowing that the world’s largest repository of personal data practices such lax internal controls.”
He cited a 2018 study of a security think tank that says many businesses have said their data breaches come from negligent employees or contractors.
“If you are affected and you receive notice from Facebook, change your passwords immediately and enable multi-factor authentication,” Liboro said, further advising Filipino Facebook users to take necessary measures to protect their personal information.
Facebook said it has since fixed the issues and committed to notify those affected by the glitch.
“We estimate that we will notify hundreds of millions of Facebook Lite users, tens of millions of other Facebook users, and tens of thousands of Instagram users,” said Pedro Canahuati, Vice President for Engineering, Security and Privacy in a statement on Thursday.
