AP
Facebook says that 30 million accounts were compromised in a major hack — down from the 50 million accounts the social network had first estimated, but still not great news.
Although Facebook took steps in light of the attack to protect users, the company has revealed that hackers had access to millions of people’s personal information.
For 14 million people, hackers could access an abundance of user data: name, email, phone number, hometown, current city, workplace, birthday, devices used to log into Facebook, the last 10 places they checked into or were tagged in, and their 15 most recent searches.
With so much sensitive data compromised, you may want to see if yours was taken — and take action to prevent it from ever happening again.
Here’s how to check if whether your information was compromised, and how to delete your account:
Facebook plans to send customized messages to the 30 million affected accounts in “coming days” with steps on how to protect themselves.
Examples of the customized messages Facebook plans to send out.Facebook
Users who were affected will get a message in the coming days, Facebook says. The message will include information on what people can do to best protect themselves from suspicious emails, text messages, and calls.
Delete your account to remove all your info — but it won’t actually be gone until after a 30-day “grace period.”
By deleting your account, you will actually remove your personal information from Facebook’s servers. This will delete everything you’ve ever put on Facebook — profile information, photos, status updates, timeline posts — but won’t include messages sent via Facebook Messenger.
However, it will take a whole 30 days for your account to actually be deleted after you’ve requested it be removed.. This “grace period” used to be 14 days, but it was reported last week that Facebook raised it to a month. This gives users an opportunity to re-activate their account if they get cold feet before making it permanent.
If you don’t want to lose everything you’ve put on Facebook, there is an option to download a copy of all your information. You have to request this archive before deleting your account, and you’ll have it sent to you via email. If you delete your account before you request this archive, you’re out of luck, so be careful.
