One of the biggest problems that face any online based company is maintaining the integrity of their customer’s information and this means security is one of the top priorities. We’re in the age where social media has given people a voice and this sometimes leads to the government spying on individuals if the information is sensitive. Facebook receives such requests and has been publishing reports about them but now the company has gone another step ahead by notifying users if their accounts are being targeted by “state-sponsored actors”.
According to Alex Stamos, Facebook’s Chief Security Officer, Facebook will notify you if we believe your account has been targeted or compromised by an attacker suspected of working on behalf of a nation-state.” The said notification pop up looks something like this:
Stamos says that the company decided to show this “additional warning” because these sort of targeted attacks tend to be more “advanced and dangerous”. From the pop up warning, the company will be using the 2 factor authentication method where you will be sent a code to the phone number you registered with so that you only can log in.
Facebook also says that they won’t explicitly say how they determine those attacks but will only issue the notification if the evidence supports it. This news will be great mostly for activists who leverage on social media to voice their issues about issues and fear the resulting repercussion of being spied by the government. We’ll also have to wait and see if other popular social networks like Twitter and Instagram will have such notifications so that users might feel a little bit safer.