By Richard Lawler, Engadget
According to The Information,
Instagram has suffered a serious security leak of its own that could've
exposed user's passwords. While Facebook recently had a much more serious problem linked to its "View As" tool that was being actively exploited by... someone, the Instagram issue is linked to its tool that allows users to download a copy of their data.
Facebook
notified affected Instagram users that when they utilized the feature,
it sent their password in plaintext in the URL. For some reason, these
passwords were also stored on Facebook's servers, however the
notification said that data has been deleted and the tool was updated so
it won't happen now.
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| © Engadget Instagram |
In a statement to The Information, a spokesperson said the
issue only impacted a "small number of people" although if those people
were using a shared computer, or on a compromised network then it
could've left their account info wide open. If you haven't been notified
then your account apparently was unaffected, but it's still a troubling
gap left in the hole of security, especially on something as important
as passwords. While everyone should be using unique password managers
for every site and service (if you need a password manager to keep up
with them, then that's the way to go, meanwhile you cna enable
two-factor authentication on Instagram as described here), not everyone does and an exposure of this kind is just another troubling episode to hit Facebook.
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