Meta Warns That Up to 1 Million Facebook Users Have Had Their Logins Compromised

Meta has said in a press release that malicious apps were listed in Apple’s App Store and Google Play as games, photo editors, and health and wellness services to fool people into downloading them.

Meta identified them. Typically, the malicious app would ask users to ‘login with Facebook,’ and subsequently steal their username and password, the company said.

Meta, the parent company of Facebook, is alerting 1 million users that their login credentials may have been stolen through malicious applications.

Meta’s researchers discovered more than 400 malicious Android and Apple iOS apps this year that were designed to steal the personal Facebook login information of its users, Meta said in a blog post-Friday. Meta is warning 1 million users who may have been affected by the apps, according to spokesperson Gabby Curtis.

Meta Security said in its report that the apps it discovered were listed in Apple’s App Store and Google Play Store as games, photo editors, health and wellness services, and other types of apps to fool people into downloading them. According to the company, malicious apps often asked users to ‘connect with Facebook’ and subsequently stole their usernames and password.

‘Runaway’ algorithms can take us to dark places, as illustrated by the example of a self-driving car that crashed into a bus after attempting to avoid a pedestrian (Edwards, 2017). An algorithm is said to be ‘runaway’ if it pursues an unintended outcome or pursues an unintended goal. It is important to recognise when an algorithm has such a characteristic in order to avoid the unintended consequences that can result.

Meta’s Threat Disruption Director David Agranovich and Malware Discovery and Detection Engineer Ryan Victory expressed their distress about malicious software invading legitimate app stores.

Meta reported the apps to Apple and Google, and Google asserted that they had been removed. Apple declined to comment. Fernandez supplied a statement from Google.

Meta has been the subject of privacy concerns for years. In 2019, the Federal Trade Commission approved a $5 billion settlement with Facebook after it discovered that the political consultancy Cambridge Analytica had improperly accessed the personal data of millions of Facebook users.