Bach Seat

Just in case you have been sleeping under a rock the past couple of weeks, social media giant Facebook (FB) was hacked again. In a presser on 10/12/2018, the social networker admitted that nearly 30 million Facebook users were hacked. This is on top of the 50 million user accounts that Mark Zuckerberg’s company allowed Cambridge Analytics to steal.

During the presser, Facebook did not apologize for exposing its users’ information but noted that it was cooperating with the FBI, the US Federal Trade Commission, the Irish Data Protection Commission, and other authorities on the data breach.

The attack involved the capture of Facebook “access tokens,” or digital keys that allow websites to recognize who someone is and keep them logged in. Using accounts they already controlled, the attackers used an “automated technique” to exploit Facebook’s “View As” functionality and steal access tokens for some 400,000 people. Hackers then used friend lists from those 400,000 accounts to obtain access tokens for another 30 million people (Here’s how to find out if you were hacked). Facebook tracked this hack to a change it made to its video uploading feature over a year ago in July 2017, and how that change affected View As.

Facebook confirmed on Friday that the hack compromised the personal and contact information of 30 million users. The compromised personal data includes:

• Name
• Phone number
• Email address
• Username,
• Gender,
• Locale/language,
• Relationship status,
• Religion,
• Hometown,
• Self-reported current city,
• Birthdate,
• Device types used to access Facebook,
• Education,
• Work,
• The last 10 places they checked into or were tagged in,
• Website,
• People or Pages they follow and,
• The 15 most recent searches.

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I have been warning about the dangers of Facebook since 2011. I use the Facebook Container extension for Firefox to helps prevent Facebook from tracking me around the web. The Facebook Container is an extension to the Desktop Firefox 57 and higher (it does not work on Firefox for mobile).

The Facebook Container is a tool to limit what data others can obtain from you. It works by isolating your Facebook identity into a separate container that makes it harder for Facebook to track your visits to other websites with third-party cookies.

When you install the extension it deletes the Facebook cookies on the computer and logs you out of Facebook. The next time you navigate to Facebook it will load in a new blue-colored browser tab (the “Container”).

You can log in and use Facebook normally when in the Facebook Container. If you click on a non-Facebook link or navigate to a non-Facebook website in the URL bar, these pages will load outside of the container.

Clicking Facebook Share buttons on other browser tabs will load them within the Facebook Container. You should know that using these buttons passes information to Facebook about the website that you shared from.

Because you will be logged into Facebook only in the Container, embedded Facebook comments and Like buttons in tabs outside the Facebook Container will not work. This prevents Facebook from associating information about your activity on websites outside of Facebook to your Facebook identity.

In addition, websites that allow you to create an account or log in using your Facebook credentials will generally not work properly. Because this extension is designed to separate Facebook use from use of other websites, this behavior is expected.

It is important to know that this extension doesn’t prevent Facebook from mishandling the data that it already has, or permitted others to obtain, about you. Facebook still will have access to everything that you do while you are on facebook.com, including your Facebook comments, photo uploads, likes, any data you share with Facebook connected apps, etc.

It is important to remember that other ad networks will try to correlate your Facebook activities with your regular browsing.

In addition to using the Facebook Container extension, you can further protect yourself from Facebook by changing your Facebook settings, using Private Browsing, enabling Tracking Protection, and blocking third-party cookies.

Related article

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Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.