Meta says it will block some users in South Africa who have not accepted its new privacy policy on its Facebook app.
It seems, though, that the new policy changes don’t apply to everyone. According to Broad Media, the security programme is aimed at groups of people that are more likely to be targeted by malicious hackers, such as human rights defenders, journalists, and government officials.
“With Facebook Protect, we worked to make enrollment and use of two-factor authentication as frictionless as possible for these groups of people by providing better user experience and support. We’re also starting to require that they use it. We know that there will always be a small subset of users that won’t immediately enrol, for example, those that happen to be less active on our platform at the time of a given mandate,” Meta said.
The company has also reportedly started sending out emails to some of its users to make them aware that their Facebook accounts will be locked if they do not agree to the new privacy policy changes. According to Broad Media, the email initially appeared as spam and indicated that the accounts will start being locked by the end of March.
“Two-factor authentication — particularly by using third-party authentication apps — significantly improves the security of your online accounts. Right now, anyone can enrol in two-factor authentication and everyone should,” Meta said.
“However, this important feature has been historically underutilized across the internet — even by people that are more likely to be targeted by malicious hackers, such as journalists, activists, political candidates, and others,” the company added.
The head of security policy at Meta, Nathaniel Gleicher said they are continuing to improve the enrollment process and notifications to avoid confusion.
“We’re looking into isolated examples where people may need help enrolling in the program. Thank you for your patience and we really appreciate people taking steps to secure their accounts,” he said.
By Zintle Nkohla
Follow Zintle Nkohla on Twitter
Follow IT News Africa on Twitter
expertstrides