The issue of security and privacy for many social network operators around the world is tough. For many users, whatever doesn’t seem right is a potential loophole to compromise users’ data or privacy. Late yesterday, there were multiple reports regarding WhatsApp, Instagram, and Messenger. These apps were not accessible to many users around the world for about an hour. Interestingly, they are all owned by Facebook and users are now worried about their data safety.
Users should know that their data is safe and there is no compromise of their privacy. Facebook had backend issues that caused Instagram users to get a “5xx Server Error” when they try to log in. However, the company has now tackled the issue.
At the time of the issue (about 15 hours ago), the company said
“There are a number of issues currently affecting Facebook products, including gaming streams. Multiple teams are working on it, and we’ll update you when we can”.
After an hour (14 hours ago), it gave another update that reads
“We’ve restored service. If you continue to have issues going live, or see issues on a stream, please either contact support ( fb.gg/support ) or report directly from the stream. Thanks for your patience!”
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Facebook did not give an elaborate description of the issue that led to the failure in the first place. However, its services are now completely back online.
For more information on WhatsApp as well as other apps, click here
Hundreds of thousands of accounts were affected
“Down Detector”, an organization that specializes in monitoring Internet services, also found that Facebook’s social network services have been disrupted. Among them, on Instagram alone, there were reports from over 100,000 users experiencing the issue.
Each of Facebook’s four major social services has more than one billion active users. Data shows that the company has 3.3 billion global users (a user will use multiple Facebook products), which is about half of the earth’s population.
The US Federal Trade Commission filed an antitrust lawsuit against Facebook last year. The lawsuit seeks to force Facebook to spin off Instagram and WhatsApp services. These services were legally acquired by Facebook some years ago.
However, there is cause for the authorities to express some worries. They believe that Facebook has too much grip on the social media space. With Instagram and WhatsApp all under Facebook, you can hardly do without some sort of connection to Facebook. This will obviously be a long-lasting lawsuit and we don’t know how it will end.