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Admins from Facebook pages visible due to errors. (Photo: Shutterstock)
It is a nightmare especially for the operators of government-critical Facebook pages. A glitch revealed the administrators of numerous prominent sites for a short time.
On Facebook pages can post celebrities, companies or organizations regardless of personal profiles. The administrators required for this can, but do not have to be made publicly visible. In many cases, such as government-critical sites, posting under a publicly visible name may even be dangerous. Due to an error on Facebook, the admins were visible behind numerous prominent pages on Friday, such as Wired reports,
Found food for doxing professionals
To access the data, Facebook users only had to open the desired page and call up the change history of the individual posts. Instead of just showing the changes, the bug also showed the public profiles of those who made the changes. The data accessible in this way was a feast for all those who deal with so-called doxing, i.e. the collection and publication of personal data. Screenshots appeared on platforms like 4-Chan or Imgur in no time at all.
The sites affected by the breakdown included Banksy, Vladimir Putin, Hillary Clinton, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, hacking collective Anonymous or climate activist Greta Thunberg, and US rapper Snoop Dogg. According to Facebook, the error occurred after a code update and was quickly rectified. We are grateful to the security researcher who informed the company of this.
Facebook responds quickly, but not quickly enough
Although Facebook reacted quickly, the information was able to get outside and will certainly continue to circulate in relevant circles for a while. If you want to be sure that you won’t be exposed, even under the guise of a Facebook page, you should register with a fake profile anyway, as security expert Lukasz Olejnik from Oxford University told Wired. However, this is not officially allowed. In addition, such a mistake as the current breakdown was hardly to be expected, says Olejnik.
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