Facebook stored at least 600 million passwords in plain text

(Natural News) Facebook is under fire yet again — and this time, it’s for leaving hundreds of millions of user passwords unprotected. Security researcher Brian Krebs reports that a company oversight left up to 600 million exposed because they were stored in plain text. Leaving the passwords in plain text format means that the information was readable and searchable among 20,000 Facebook employees.

Storing passwords in plain text is a huge security risk for anybody — and when you’ve got 20,000 employees with access to an unprotected password storage bank, things can really start to look grim. According to the report, the plain text password issue could affect users of Facebook, Facebook Lite and Instagram –and in some cases, the password information dates as far back as 2012. While Facebook has gotten into an awful lot of trouble lately for selling data and violating user privacy, this is an issue that could have been entirely avoided — had the proper security precautions been taken.

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