Facebook’s latest fail: social network stored millions of passwords in plain text for months

Facebook on Thursday revealed that it’s been storing millions of user passwords in plain text for the past three months.

“As part of a routine security review in January, we found that some user passwords were being stored in a readable format within our internal data storage systems,” the company said on its blog.

This means that Facebook has been able see what your passwords are, letter for letter.

“To be clear, these passwords were never visible to anyone outside of Facebook and we have found no evidence to date that anyone internally abused or improperly accessed them,” the company further claimed.

According to the report, millions of Facebook passwords we exposed for both the regular and Lite app users. Thousands of Instagram accounts were also affected.

The company intends to notify everyone who was affected.

Going on to explain the security behind its password system, Facebook did not indicate what caused so many passwords to be stored in readable, plain text format.

The company does, however, claim that it has fixed the problem.

Furthermore, Facebook suggests you change your password and implement two-factor authentication as a precaution.

The news comes in the midst of the company’s plans to brush up on its treatment of user privacy.

Feature image: Facebook