Facebook wants to convince you that huge personal data leaks are normal

A security problem that Facebook thought it dealt with more than a year ago resurfaced in the worst possible way a few weeks ago when it was discovered that a database containing the personal details of more than 533 million users circulated online. Facebook said initially that the hack isn’t new and that the vulnerability issue had been fixed in 2019. It then followed up to explain that it would not inform impacted users and that the hack wasn’t a breach of its servers. Instead, attackers abused a tool to gather data for hundreds of millions of people. Data included full names, locations, phone numbers, and birthdays. A security researcher found Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg in the list of impacted users.

Neither Facebook nor Facebook users have control over the leaked database, so it can't be removed from the internet or forgotten. But Facebook doesn’t seem interested in providing any sort of assistance beyond telling everyone who will listen that the problem had been fixed. What’s even worse is that Facebook expects similar data scraping to continue despite its efforts to prevent it. A leaked internal email shows that Facebook plans to normalize this sort of security problem in public messaging rather than coming up with ways to ensure similar incidents can't happen.