Facebook has announced that hackers were able to get personal information from 29 million accounts as part of the security breach disclosed two weeks ago. Hackers accessed data from 29 million accounts and got information including name, email addresses or phone numbers from all of them. For 14 million of the accounts, information included hometown, birthdate, the last 10 places they checked into or 15 most recent searches.
The exact number hadn’t been known before. Originally Facebook said 50 million accounts could have been affected, but Facebook didn’t know if they had been misused. One million accounts were affected but hackers didn’t gain information. The social media service plans to send messages to people whose accounts were hacked and added that third-party apps and Facebook apps like Whatsapp and Instagram were unaffected by the breach.
Last month, Facebook launched an investigation with the FBI and released a statement in response the the breach. It said: ‘On the afternoon of Tuesday, 25 September, our engineering team discovered a security issue affecting almost 50 million accounts. ‘We’re taking this incredibly seriously and wanted to let everyone know what’s happened and the immediate action we’ve taken to protect people’s security.’