'To be clear, these passwords were never visible to anyone outside of Facebook'
Facebook has admitted that millions of passwords were stored in plain text on its internal servers, a security slip that left them readable by the social networking platform's employees.
Mr Canahuati said that the Silicon Valley company expected to notify hundreds of millions of Facebook Lite users, tens of millions of other Facebook users, and tens of thousands of Instagram users whose passwords may have been vulnerable to prying eyes. The exact number had yet to be determined, but archives with unencrypted user passwords were found dating back to the year 2012, according to Krebs."We have fixed these issues and as a precaution we will be notifying everyone whose passwords we have found were stored in this way," Mr Canahuati said.
The social network's handling of user data has been a flashpoint for controversy since it admitted last year that Cambridge Analytica, a political consultancy, used an app that may have hijacked the private details of 87 million users.Facebook has announced a series of moves to tighten handling of data, including eliminating most of its data-sharing partnerships with outside companies.
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