Sayeed Muhammad of DOT
In a latest announcement, Facebook has said it will not provide identity fraud protection for the victims of its latest data breach. On Friday, the social media giant stated that 14 million users had highly personal information stolen by hackers, reports BBC.

The hacking included search history, location data and information about relationships, religion and more. However, unlike other major hacks involving big companies, Facebook said it had no plans to provide protection services for concerned users.

According to an analyst, the decision was “unconscionable”.

“This kind of information could help thieves create social engineering-based theft programmes, preying on the Facebook hack victims,” said Patrick Moorhead, from Moor Insights and Strategy.

Users can visit this link to find out if they have been directly affected.

For the most severely impacted users – a group of around 14 million, Facebook said – the stolen data included “username, gender, locale/language, relationship status, religion, hometown, self-reported current city, birthdate, device types used to access Facebook, education, work, the last 10 places they checked into or were tagged in, website, people or pages they follow, and the 15 most recent searches”.

News of the hack emerged on 5 October when Facebook said it feared 50m users had been affected. On Friday, the company revised downwards its estimate to “about 30m”.

“We have not ruled out the possibility of smaller-scale attacks, which we’re continuing to investigate,” Facebook’s head of product management, Guy Rosen, wrote in a blog post.

In Europe, the hack means Facebook faces a potential fine of up to $1.63bn (£1.25bn), approximately 4% of its annual global revenue. The breach is being seen as the first major test of the new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) which came into force in May.