Facebook Deals Big Blow on Data Privacy with Password Scandal: Digital Marketing Exec

Digital marketing exec Augusto Beato expressed his dismay on the widespread data privacy breaches committed by Facebook and says that its impact goes beyond social media sites.

"Everyone should now be convinced that passwords and other data contained in various internet sites are not kept in a high level of privacy, " said Beato, who ​may be reached through the website of his company, Portland SEO.

"This incident will keep the public guessing on how private the data in other sites that they access, such those of banks, insurance firms, and hospitals, are being kept," he added.

Long before it was reported that millions of Facebook passwords were accessible by the social network's 20,000 employees, Beato had misgivings about how the passwords are handled.

But he was surprised to realize that up to 600 million passwords were merely stored in plain text. The passwords that were exposed could date back to 2012, he said. In a statement, Facebook said it had now resolved a "glitch" that had stored the passwords on its internal network.

Developers reportedly created applications that logged and stored the passwords without encryption.

Facebook claimed that it discovered the issue in January during a routine security review. It added that most affected were users of Facebook Lite.

But it added it would enforce a password re-set only if its taskforce looking into the issue uncovered abuse of the login credentials.

The password issue is the latest in a string of security breaches committed by Facebook. Last year, it was revealed that data on millions of Facebook users were harvested by Cambridge Analytica, a data science company.