Not Tens Of Thousands, It's Tens Of Millions Instagram Passwords Are Exposed

Following the exposure of millions of unsecured Facebook passwords revealed recently, Facebook admitted that a slew of Instagram-based passwords had also been saved in un-encrypted text, unfortunately. Without a doubt, this insecure format would definitely allow Facebook’s insiders to see them easily in case they intend to do it. The new ballpark figure is significantly bigger than an early number which recorded about thousands of plain-text passwords last month. At present, Instagram is the most popular photo and video-sharing social networking service in the world. Notably, the trending platform did hit 1 billion monthly users in 2018.

For your information, such kinds of platforms typically hash and encrypt users’ passwords and no one is able to see them. Commenting on this incident, Facebook confirmed these stored passwords were not internally abused or improperly accessed after an investigation. On the other hand, a report released by Mueller on Thursday has revealed that Instagram's parent company, had "unintentionally" collected the email contacts of its users over the past three years.

It's safe to say that privacy is likely not a part of Facebook's concern. The company has failed to integrate privacy into their business model, and it doesn’t seem like they’ll get there anytime soon. Facebook acknowledged all the lapses and made some announcements to enhance its privacy, but it does not mean a lot when having consecutive scandals. Facebook's founder Mark Zuckerberg has to face many challenges in changing the company's policy.  There is an immense challenge for them when it comes to building consumer trust, as consumers are expressing concerns that several platforms are misusing their data and Facebook has been consistently under heat for it.