Facebook restores ‘View as Public’ feature following 2018 security breach

Facebook is re-enabling its ‘View as Public’ feature for all users for the first time since a major security breach hit the platform in September 2018.

At the time, hackers accessed the accounts of nearly 50 million users by exploiting a security flaw in the View as Public feature, which lets people see what Facebook profiles look like to the general public.

As a result, Facebook disabled the feature, patched the bug and advised 90 million users to log back into their accounts to ensure they were safe.

Now, Facebook has confirmed on Twitter that it has restored access to the feature, although it didn’t mention the September hacking incident.

Today, we're making it easier for people to manage their publicly visible information on Facebook with two updates: (1) we’re bringing back the “View As Public” feature and (2) we’re adding an “Edit Public Details” button directly to profiles. pic.twitter.com/zI5bVwodjp

— Meta (@Meta) May 14, 2019

The ‘View as Public’ feature is intended to inform users what information will be shown off to other people, particularly those who aren’t friends with them. With certain privacy settings on, users can limit the information that non-friend users can see when browsing their profiles.

In its tweet, Facebook also confirmed that a new button called ‘Edit Public Details’ has been added to profiles for easier privacy settings management.

Via: The Verge