Facebook Hack Could Have Compromised Instagram And Many Other Apps Too

You didn’t forget that Facebook owns Instagram, did you? You must know this little fact following the news that at least 50 million Facebook users, and possibly 90 million, had their accounts accessed by hackers. As it turns out, those users’ Instagram accounts could have been compromised, too.

Last week saw 50 million Facebook accounts affected by a massive hack discovered. The tech giant said that the attackers had exploited a vulnerability in the ‘View As’ feature which would have allowed hackers to steal digital login credentials of millions of users.

But a new revelation might further widen the impact of the security breach. Facebook’s Vice president of product management, Guy Rosen, has disclosed that hackers may have also exploited the security flaw to access users’ accounts on third-party services, which use Facebook login, such as Instagram Tinder, Airbnb,  as well as Spotify.

How so?

You can log into your Instagram account or some platforms with your Facebook account. This process saves you the boring process of filling up sign up forms on every platform. But the benefit comes at a cost, all these platforms will share the same access credentials. This basically means if you signed up for Instagram or and any other platform using your Facebook account, hackers might have also gained access to your account on another platform.

Anyway, Facebook has since now patched the vulnerabilities and revoked the affected access tokens that were stolen by hackers. So I guess there is no need to freak out, Facebook has got everything under its control now.