In a case of massive breach of privacy and data, Facebook has admitted to having a “security issue” with nearly 50 million accounts and confirmed that their “access tokens” has been compromised. Hackers have reportedly fetched "digital keys" which allows a user to stay logged in on Facebook for a long period of time without logging in every time a user uses the application.

The issue has reportedly affected nearly 50 million accounts, and would require users to re-enter their passwords. The company’s engineers alerted the organisation about the security issue on Tuesday. Facebook Reveals Data Of Up To 87 Million Users Comprised, Announces New Security Measures.

“Our investigation is still in its early stages. But it's clear that attackers exploited a vulnerability in Facebook's code that impacted 'View As', a feature that lets people see what their own profile looks like to someone else,” Facebook said in a statement.

Facebook was already hit with data breach issue earlier this year. Personal information of about 87 million Facebook users, mostly in the US, may have been improperly shared with the UK-based political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica, Facebook had revealed as it announced a slew of measures to address its users' privacy concerns in April. Over half a million of the users whose personal data might have been compromised are from India.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Sep 28, 2018 10:58 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).