September 8, 2024

Athens News

News in English from Greece

Facebook + Instagram + Whatsapp don’t work

Facebook, as well as related Instagram + Whatsapp, have stopped working in a number of European countries, including Greece – people complain about the inability to open a social network or log into their account. Many users have noticed that their pages are automatically logged out and are afraid of a hacker attack.

Users from all over the world, mainly from European countries, complain about the inaccessibility of the social network Facebook, as well as the social network Instagram and the Whatsapp messenger. According to the DownDetector portal, residents of Greece, Russia, Ukraine, Germany, Belgium, Romania, Slovakia, Denmark, Portugal and other countries report a failure in the platform.

At the same time, 42% of users complain about problems with authorization, 38% – about the complete unavailability of the service, and 19% – about incorrect loading of images.

Many were afraid that they had become victims of a hacker attack, as they were “thrown out” of the system, and they failed to log in back – the password reset service also fails. The account of the editorial board “Russian Athens” was also logged out, and the Facebook site itself was unavailable.

As usual with Facebook disruptions, many users have started tweeting their complaints, so the hashtag #FacebookDown [рус. #ФейсбукЛежит] has already appeared in the trends of this platform.

We’re aware that some people are having trouble accessing our apps and products. We’re working to get things back to normal as quickly as possible, and we apologize for any inconvenience.

– Facebook (@Facebook) October 4, 2021

The true reasons for the crash are still unknown, although Facebook released an official comment:

“We are aware that some people are having problems accessing our apps and products. We are working to get things back to normal as soon as possible, and we apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.”

It is assumed that technical problems on the company’s servers are to blame, but the likelihood of a cyberattack cannot be completely ruled out. Last time hackers hacked social network Mark Zuckerberg at the end of March 2021.

Using a vulnerability in the “View As” function, which allows you to see your page as other users see it, cybercriminals were able to take over tens of millions of account data.

The company said that 533 million affected accounts had been restarted and added that another 60 million user pages had been restarted as a precautionary measure.

The hacked database contains user data from 106 countries, including 615,000 from Greece, 10 million from Russia, 32 million from the United States, 11 million from the UK and 6 million from India. Business Insider verified the correctness of several verified entries by matching the phone numbers of well-known Facebook users with identifiers from the database. Reporters also verified that the email addresses used to reset Facebook’s password were correct – this functionality can also be used to partially reveal a user’s phone number.

Then the information security experts explained that during the attack, users of not only Facebook, but also Instagram could be affected, since many log in to the photo platform using the social network.

If a user whose account has been compromised logs into his Instagram via Facebook, then both of his profiles are at risk.

Experts recommended changing passwords to all those who noticed that their account was suddenly logged out – this could be a sign of cyber hacking. In the current situation, changing the secret combination will also not be superfluous.





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