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Article by: Naomi Nix - The Washington Post reporter Facebook parent company Meta is warning 1 million users that their login information may have been compromised through malicious apps. Meta's researchers found more than 400 malicious Android and Apple iOS apps this year that were designed to steal the personal Facebook login information of its users, the company said Friday in a blog post. Meta spokesperson Gabby Curtis confirmed that Meta is warning 1 million users who may have been affected by the apps. Meta said the apps they identified were listed in Apple's app store and Google Play Store as games, photo editors, health and lifestyle services and other types of apps to trick people into downloading them. Often the malicious app would ask users to "login with Facebook" and later steal their username and password, according to the company. "This is a highly adversarial space and while our industry peers work to detect and remove malicious software, some of these apps evade detection and make it onto legitimate app stores," wrote Meta's Threat Disruption Director David Agranovich, and Malware Discovery and Detection Engineer Ryan Victory. Meta said it reported the apps to Apple and Google and the apps had since been taken down. Google spokesperson Edward Fernandez said in a statement that the "apps identified in the report are no longer available on Google Play." A representative for Apple responded but didn't comment. Meta has faced scrutiny over its privacy practices for years. In 2019, the Federal Trade Commission approved a roughly $5 billion settlement with Facebook after reports found the political consultancy Cambridge Analytica improperly accessed personal data from millions of Facebook users. My comments: If you downloaded an app for Android or Apple iOS and it wants, or requires, you to first log into Facebook before it will function "treat that app with a great deal of suspicion!" In fact, my advice would be to delete the app just to be on the safe side. If you think you might have used one or more of these malicious apps definitely take the time to change your Facebook login credentials ASAP! Regards, Ritchie...

I once had a Facebook account but I deleted it several years ago when "I discovered back then" that the company was allowing third-party entities to access user's profile data, for a price. I was "not cool" with that even back then! Plus the malicious re-direct links & the hacker activity didn't exactly entice me to stay either. Facebook was originally created for college students to stay in touch with each other and share ideas. A noble cause indeed! Facebook has now allowed itself to become a global source of fake news & mis-information. Facebook's CEO Mark Zuckerberg publicly offered an apology yesterday for allowing the British firm Cambridge Analytica to access at least 50 million users profile data to try and interfere with the 2016 presidential election. This was done by targeting mis-leading or down right fake new stories to individuals that according to their data within their profiles would be more susceptible to believing the mis-leading or false information to benefit the Trump election campaign. Because of this recent debacle stocks for Facebook has been taking a real downward tumble. It is estimated that the company has lost at least 50 million dollars in stock market trading just in the last few days. I'm sure the major share holders in the company are not happy at all with recent events! It's also been reported that many users are opting to delete their profiles in disbelief & disgust! Did you know that can take up to 90 days to finalize? Since Facebook is also ad driven these days I'm sure that the advertisers are closely watching this situation deciding when it's best to abandon a sinking ship. Facebook isn't the only social media site that allows false or mis-leading information to proliferate. So what's a person to do? First of all don't believe everything you read on the net is factual. Get your news from different sources, TV news, newspapers, magazines. "Be as informed as you can about issues instead of allowing someone else to do your thinking for you!" As an after thought maybe it's time for Mark to step down and allow for some new blood to inject some new thinking into the project before it's too late. My own thoughts for what they're worth.