The letter comes one day after Facebook and Instagram experienced an outage of several hours which was attributed to a technical issue.
Account takeovers are when bad actors break into a user’s account and change passwords, effectively hijacking the account and blocking out the rightful owner. Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares calls on Meta to thoroughly review data security practices for protecting its users’ accounts from being unfairly locked out or taken over by scammers.
“Protecting users’ accounts and personal information should be among the top priorities for social media giants like Meta. The rise in account takeovers is concerning and puts the privacy of nearly every American at risk,” Miyares said.
Scammers can steal personal information, read private messages, scam the users’ contacts and falsely post once they hijack an account. While account takeovers are not new, schemes have seen a dramatic increase in the last year, and users have struggled to receive assistance from Meta.
The coalition of attorneys general encouraged Meta to:
- Increase staffing to respond to account takeover complaints
- Greater investment in account takeover mitigation tactics
- Adopt new procedures for users to protect themselves, such as multi-step authentication measures
If you or someone you know has had their account hijacked, contact Meta immediately. Users unable to get in touch with Meta or have the issue resolved should refer to the Facebook Help page.
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Rebecca Barnabi
