Facebook | Common News Update

Apr72021 by adminNo Comments

Was your phone number stolen in the Facebook breach? Here’s how to check

Technology

People can now check whether their phone numbers are among the data stolen from more than 500 million Facebook users - including 11 million from the UK - and leaked online.Facebook has confirmed that the data is related to a historic breach related to a technical flaw the company "found and fixed" in August 2019, although privacy regulators are now asking additional questions. People can now search the independent and widely respected Have I Been Pwned? site - which monitors hacking forums for dumps - to see if their numbers are among those listed in the enormous dataset.Searchers should include the country code with their query, so in the UK it would begin 4479... and so on. Image: Users can search 'Have I Been Pwned?' to see if their numbers a...

Mar272021 by adminNo Comments

Facebook freezes Maduro’s page over Covid claim

Technology

ReutersFacebook has frozen Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro's page after he claimed without evidence that a herbal remedy could cure Covid-19.He claimed in January that a thyme herb solution could cure the disease. He will be unable to post for 30 days.The company said the leader had repeatedly violated its policies on coronavirus disinformation.Mr Maduro is not the only world leader to face a pushback from social media companies over Covid.US President Donald Trump and Brazil's Jair Bolsonaro have also faced action over Covid posts.A Facebook spokesperson told the BBC: "We removed a video posted to President Nicolas Maduro's page for violating our policies against misinformation about Covid-19 that is likely to put people at risk for harm."We follow guidance from the WHO [World Health ...

Mar252021 by adminNo Comments

Google, Facebook Twitter grilled in US on fake news

Technology

Getty ImagesTech bosses Mark Zuckerberg, Sundar Pichai and Jack Dorsey are being grilled by US politicians over the proliferation of disinformation on YouTube, Twitter and Facebook.This latest hearing is the first since the storming of the US Capitol.Politicians believe that was a tipping point for greater regulation.They have said they plan to change the legislation that protects online platforms from liability for content posted by third parties.The session began in combative style with the chair Mike Doyle asking all three executives whether they felt they bore responsibility for the events in Washington. None were prepared to give a one word "yes" or "no" answer as he demanded.He also challenged the platforms to remove 12 prolific anti-vaxxers from their platforms, which he said accoun...

Mar242021 by adminNo Comments

Facebook finds Chinese hacking operation targeting Uyghurs

Technology

Facebook says hackers in China used fake accounts and impostor websites in a bid to break into the phones of Uyghur MuslimsBy Associated PressMarch 24, 2021, 9:14 PM• 2 min readShare to FacebookShare to TwitterEmail this articleHackers in China used fake Facebook accounts and impostor websites to try to break into the computers and smartphones of Uyghur Muslims, the social network said Wednesday.The company said the sophisticated, covert operation targeted Uyghur activists, journalists and dissidents from China’s Xinjiang region, as well as individuals living in Turkey, Kazakhstan, the U.S., Syria, Australia, Canada and other nations.The hackers attempted to gain access to the computers and phones by creating fake Facebook accounts for supposed journalists and activists, as well as fake we...

Mar82021 by adminNo Comments

Instagram photos help Facebook AI ‘teach itself’

Technology

FacebookOne billion public-facing Instagram photos were used to train an algorithm created by Facebook to learn to recognise images by itself.Traditionally, algorithms have been trained on datasets which have already been categorised by humans - labelled cats, dogs or flowers, for example.But the Instagram photos were presented to the algorithm without the labelling.Afterwards it was able to correctly identify images with 84.5% accuracy, Facebook reported.Facebook has called its system Seer, an abbreviation of self-supervised. AI expert Calum Chase said the system "could be an important step towards the holy grail of computers with common sense" if it proved effective in the long term.There are other firms also working on similar processes.Facebook said that while this sort of technique ha...