On Monday, 10/04, Facebook users and their other companies reported not being able to use social networks properly. Networks like Instagram and WhatsApp, which also belong to Mark Zuckerberg, were off the air for about six hours.
What this article covers:
What caused Facebook and other apps to crash?
Facebook reported that the failure was noticed by engineers on the team, and was due to a change in the configuration of the routers that ended up leaving the networks off the air in the early afternoon. The failure caused the inactivation of the systems for six hours.
User data leak
Despite Facebook declaring that there were no leaks of data from its users on any of the social networks that suffered from the flaw, internet users suspect that data from more than 500 million users were made available on the internet and will be used as merchandise in the hacker market, in addition to more than 1.5 million users being marketed in the same market.
The data would have been obtained through the “scraping” of the online space that was left unprotected, and sites like Privacy Affairs (an online information provider that can be consulted in case of suspected leaks) claim that the leaked data appears to be true, and if complete can be used as tools for carrying out cyber crimes.
The fall in the financial market
With the fall of social networks, Mark Zuckerberg faced a drop in the value of his shares. The billionaire even lost around US$ 16 million, and Facebook’s value on the Stock Exchange dropped to 5.29%. Other companies such as Apple and Twitter also suffered a drop in their values, the second being even more affected with a drop of 6.62%.
Crashes in other social networks and digital services
Users of companies like Netflix, Snapchat, Zoom, Telegram and even Gmail also reported technical problems and even slowness in using the apps due to the large flow of users who migrated to try to make up for the absence of Facebook, Instagram and especially WhatsApp.
The last network in question is widely used, especially by Brazilians for personal reasons (such as groups of friends and family) and professionals such as work groups that use the platform as a faster and more practical means of communication between employees and supervisors.
