Facebook buys black market passwords to keep your account safe

Account safety is about more than just building secure software because a data-saturated company of Facebook’s size and scope can build a perfectly secure software and yet users can still get hurt. This is the philosophy approach of Facebook’s chief security officer, Alex Stamos, as an alternative way to ensure Facebook users’ safety. To achieve so, the social media giant purchases passwords in the black market from hackers to keep your account safe.

For example, Alex explains that many users are still using “123456.” As a solution, Facebook users with these types of passwords are automatically alerted to make their accounts safer because they are more vulnerable to being compromised. This is something Facebook is keen to help its users avoid, says Alex. There are additional interesting details behind the reasoning and how Facebook is doing this. Feel free to access full article via the link below.

https://www.cnet.com/news/facebook-chief-security-officer-alex-stamos-web-summit-lisbon-hackers/