The social media giant Facebook had a service interruption earlier today locking some users out from their accounts with a warning message that their account has been compromised since “someone may have logged into your account.”
Further, the message explained that “in order to keep your information secure we’ve locked your account. Before we can unlock it, please verify your identity and change your password. Your account will remain hidden until you complete this process.”
Those trying to sign in were seeing a message that “this feature isn’t available right now. An error occurred while processing this request. please try again later.”
Searches Twitter for "Facebook down."
Okay, it's not just me then. pic.twitter.com/ckzG0djBny— Heather ♿📷 (@MissJupiter1957) February 24, 2017
No, no one is trying to hack your account. This is happening worldwide. #facebook #facebookdown pic.twitter.com/bnjhPbmWhX
— Vicky Melo (@vickymelo) February 24, 2017
Facebook also sent emails to users informing that their account was accessed by a third party.
“It looks like someone may have accessed your facebook account. To secure your account, you’ll need to answer a few questions and change your password the next time you go to Facebook. For your protection, no one can see you on facebook until you secure your account.”
The warning alert was quite a shocker for many. A number of users took the issue on Twitter and some reset their passwords and came back online asking their friends if they had to go through the same process.
DownDetecor, a website that keeps an eye on down and uptime of famous online platforms confirmed that users in Europe, USA, Australia and Brazil were mostly impacted.
Meanwhile, Facebook has also acknowledged the issue and stated that “earlier today an error in one of our systems designed to help prevent suspicious account access sent a small set of people to our account recovery flow unnecessarily. We have fixed the issue and are in the process of clearing the affected accounts from this recovery flow. We apologize for any inconvenience.”
In must be noted that earlier today, Google account users worldwide faced a similar issue in which their Google accounts were suddenly and unexpectedly logged off without any reason. However, Google was also quick to solve the issue and stated that it was a technical glitch and their account security was not affected.
It is weird that Facebook and Google faced the same issue on the same day. One can only hope in both cases it was technical issues rather than a large-scale security breach.
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