Revealed: Facebook exposed identities of moderators to suspected terrorists

Found on The Guardian on Friday, 16 June 2017
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Of the 1,000 affected workers, around 40 worked in a counter-terrorism unit based at Facebook’s European headquarters in Dublin, Ireland. Six of those were assessed to be “high priority” victims of the mistake after Facebook concluded their personal profiles were likely viewed by potential terrorists.

The moderator said that others within the high-risk six had their personal profiles viewed by accounts with ties to Isis, Hezbollah and the Kurdistan Workers Party. Facebook complies with the US state department’s designation of terrorist groups.

The real security lapse is not the bug itself, but that moderators who patrol terrorist content are doing so with their own accounts that makes it possible to identify them.