Facebook made the news for all of the wrong reasons in 2019. There were several security breaches where user data was exposed. There was also all of the negative publicity surrounding the future launch of Facebook’s cryptocurrency venture called Libra. The company has been forced to do major damage control as a result of all the bad press they have received in recent months. It seems that the bad press will not be stopping any time soon. An online security consultant living in Ukraine noticed that another very serious Facebook data breach has happened. This time, almost 270 million people had confidential info exposed. Most of these people are living in the United States.
The breach would have been bad enough by itself. However, it was made much worse because of a couple of other factors. For example, the fact that Facebook was totally unaware of the breach until they were told about it is very disturbing. An outside security consultant had to tell one of the biggest companies in the world that their user data had been compromised. Needless to say, confidence in the world’s biggest social media network is not going to be very high right now.
There is another aspect to this user data breach that has people around the world very concerned. Facebook wants to launch their Libra cryptocurrency at some point in the future. Obviously, cryptocurrency has always been a major target for hackers around the world. Therefore, Facebook’s security needs to be airtight in order to protect the Libra cryptocurrency that users will be buying and storing with the company. So far, Facebook has not instilled any confidence in their users that they are capable of protecting a monetary asset that hackers will want to steal. This means that Libra will have a huge stumbling block to overcome if and when it ever sees the light of day.
It is shocking that these massive data breaches keep happening to Facebook over and over again. The company generates literally billions of dollars in profit every year. Therefore, they have the financial resources to have the finest online security that money can buy. Facebook will need to convince people around the world that their security problems and data breaches are a thing of the past. That is the only way that people are going to trust the company enough to store their Libra for them in the future.
Dil Bole Oberoi
