Polygon Launches Web3 ID That Keeps Personal Details Private

The Polygon network, a decentralized app (Dapp) layer for Ethereum today announced that “Polygon ID”, one of the first identity platforms powered by zero-knowledge (ZK) cryptography — privacy, and blockchain scaling technology, will be ready before the year ends.

The blockchain-based ID for decentralized and self-sovereign models has Zero-knowledge native protocols for ultimate user privacy, is scalable and private on-chain verification to boost decentralized apps and decentralized finance, and is open to existing standards and ecosystem development.

Polygon ID leverages the Iden3 protocol and Circom ZK toolkit. Moving forward, both of the projects will be sponsored by Polygon while keeping the original spirit of community initiatives to provide open-source protocols and tools to the broader ecosystem of developers.

"Polygon ID is private by default, offers on-chain verification and permissionless attestation. There is nothing in the digital identity space now that ticks all these boxes,” said Mihailo Bjelic, Polygon’s co-founder. “It is also a great showcase for how zero-knowledge proofs can help us create a better world.”
Polygon ID is expected to be used by organizations and businesses, for identity and trust management purposes, such as KYC (Know Your Customer) and digital wallets, where users can authenticate  themselves to blockchain-based applications, without providing passwords or data to every such application individually.

Polygon ID will also allow for the construction of new forms of reputations like a decentralized credit score for financial primitives and social payments in DeFi; decentralized Sybil score, voting power/delegation, and domain-expertise reputation for DAOs to enable new decision-making and governance models; player reputation profile for Web3 games; private and censorship-resistant P2P communication and interactions for social applications.

Polygon ID leverages the Iden3 protocol and Circom ZK toolkit. Moving forward, both of the projects will be sponsored by Polygon while keeping the original spirit of community initiatives to provide open source protocols and tools to the broader ecosystem of developers.

According to the company’s stated timeline, the proof-of-concept (PoC) has been developed and the complete Polygon ID platform is scheduled to be ready in the third quarter of 2022.

77% Indian Consumers Against Use of Technology Tracking Buying Patterns: Survey

As many as 77 per cent of Indian consumers in a recent survey believe that organisations collect too much data about them and 74 per cent were against the use of technology tools to assess their buying patterns. Buying pattern refers to the typical way in which consumers buy goods or avail services like buying-frequency, quantity, duration, timing etc.

A survey conducted by Verint Systems across 18 countries and 34,000 consumers highlighted how an 'always on' era has led to explosion of unstructured data from digital channels of customer engagement.

In India, more than 2000 consumers who have access to a digital platform took part in the research to reveal their assessment on issues like how customers perceive data privacy, their readiness to accept data breach, and use of technology to analyse customers' buying patterns, a Verint statement said.

As per the findings, nearly 77% of the Indian respondents agreed that organisations collect too much data about them and 74% of the Indian respondents said it is "creepy" to use technology to analyse their buying patterns and preferences, the statement noted.

"Out of the 18 surveyed countries, Indian customers take lead as 73 per cent of the respondents voted in favour of actively avoiding brands that use technology to analyse and track their buying/engagement patterns," it added.

About 755 of the Indian customers who were surveyed agreed that service providers cannot do much to prevent data breach, but majority did not wish to engage with a brand that has experienced a data hack.

The survey however noted that Indian customers are willing to share their personal information to receive personalised services and in exchange of discounts.

Commenting on findings, Anil Chawla, managing director - Customer Engagement Solutions, Verint said "with democratisation of data, it is important for organisations to sync up their teams, processes and technology to fulfil several data privacy norms. Organisations must encourage a culture of compliance by maintaining data security, being transparent about their data collection and data management processes". PTI MBI

WhatsApp Partners with Indian School of Public Policy

WhatsApp on Wednesday said it has partnered with Indian School of Public Policy to help future policy makers understand importance of privacy-centric design in product development, even as the app faces pressure from India to bring in traceability of fake message originators.

The partnership was announced by WhatsApp Global Head Will Cathcart during a discussion with Indian startups and entrepreneurs in Mumbai.

During the session, Cathcart discussed how designing products with privacy as a key principle is critical for building successful consumer and business products.

"...we're committed to helping people in India have private conversations with others that matter to them. We believe our partnership with ISPP will help future policy makers understand that designing products with privacy as a core tenet helps deliver the fundamental right to privacy people should have in today's digital world," Cathcart said.

Last year, fake news circulated on WhatsApp incited mob fury that led to the lynching of over a dozen people across India. The Indian government has asked WhatsApp - which has over 200 million users in India - to devise ways to identify message originators to trace the origin of fake messages circulated on its platform.

The Facebook-owned company, on its part, has maintained that doing so will undermine end-to-end encryption and affect privacy protection for users.

Cathcart, who previously worked with Facebook and took over the role at WhatsApp from Chris Daniels, is scheduled to be present at an event around technology enabling digital inclusion with Niti Aayog Chief Executive Officer Amitabh Kant on Thursday.

Under the partnership with ISPP, a series of privacy design workshops (co-hosted by TTC Labs) will be held. These workshops, aimed at future policy makers, will start from September 17.

Luis Miranda, Founder Director of Indian School of Public Policy (ISPP), said the changing Indian landscape will require leaders who can tackle its unique problems and begin to formulate creative solutions for the future.

"We are glad to be partnering with WhatsApp and TTC Labs to help our students better understand privacy centric product design so they can help create a robust policy ecosystem that creates positive impact for India," Miranda said. PTI SR

CBDT Boss Clarifies on I-T Department Snooping on Social Media Posts

It is a "misconception" to think that the Income Tax Department is snooping on social media posts related to exotic foreign tours or possession of expensive goods to check undisclosed income, a top official has said. 

CBDT Chairman P C Mody told PTI during an interview that the tax department does not need to undertake such measures as it is empowered to obtain various information and data sets from multiple agencies and possesses a strong data analytics setup to work out the source and destination of high-value transactions. 

He was asked if the taxman or the I-T Department scans Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and other social media handles of people to obtain secret information about their income and spending behaviour as reported in the past in multiple media reports. 

It has been reported that the taxman will keep a secret eye on social media posts to find out who is undertaking an expensive foreign trip or is flaunting their expensive vehicle or other goods over these platforms, in order to ensure such people or entities pay their due taxes. 

"That is a misconception. Why do we need to go on (social media platforms)?," the CBDT boss told the news agency. 

"We already get to know actual travel details or other financial transactions of a person from authentic sources," he said. 

The CBDT is the policy-making body for the I-T department. 

He added that the Board has deployed an advanced data analytics system that mines and churns a lot of figures and data to understand which sectors should be taxed and where can relief be extended. 

The tax department has named this new system as 'Project Insight', as it provides a 360-degree profiling and insight into an entities' complete transactions trail. 

Mody said the department, backed by these systems, is now working to start an SMS-based service where a person will be intimated about at least 18 different types of transactions they have undertaken above a certain threshold of money. 

"This is to promote a non-adversarial regime between the taxman and the taxpayer. We just inform the person that we know that you have undertaken such and such transactions and hence you should mention these while filing your income tax returns (ITRs) and also pay taxes, if applicable," he said. 

"We have just launched the pre-filled ITRs for certain class of taxpayers. It is aimed to ease tax compliance for taxpayers. 

"We are working to make things hassle-free and work like an accountant for the taxpayer by keeping a record and presenting an automated account of their transactions," he said. 

The department obtains these details from third party agencies like banks, mutual funds, credit card companies, sub-registrar and it is advised that taxpayers should re-check these information before submitting the return as there could be chances that some discrepancies creep in while furnishing of this data, he said. 

In the recent budget, the government has made ITR filing mandatory for high spenders even if their taxable income is below the threshold exemption limit of Rs 5 lakh.

Those mandated to file returns include people spending more than Rs 2 lakh on a foreign trip or depositing Rs 1 crore in a year in a bank account or paying electricity bill of more than Rs 1 lakh in a year.

The CBDT chief said these measures were brought in after data analytics found high spenders were probably not filing their returns. 

"If someone is spending this much, should not their income be taxable? One should see the entire ecosystem around this...," he said. 

The aim is to create a tax compliant society where the honest tax payer is honoured and respected and the tax evader faces the law, he said. 

Mody said it is with this aim that the government and the CBDT has decided to usher in the regime of anonymised assessment where the taxpayer and the assessing officer will not meet each other and the entire tax proceeding would be conducted online.

"That infrastructure for faceless assessment is already provided for. It may need some sort of an augmentation which will definitely be done," he said

~ PTI

Top Image by 1195798 from Pixabay

Facebook is Giving Your Phone Numbers to Advertisers without You Know About This

Social network giant, Facebook, which has a knack of being in controversy for its greed towards users' data, has again land up in controversial revelation according to which Facebook has admitted that it is using your phone number to target ads whether you give it to them willingly or not.

This simply means that Facebook is sharing its users' phone numbers with advertisers without the users actually realizing this fact. the social network company confirmed that it uses phone numbers provided for security reason, such as 2-factor authorization (2FA), to personalize users's experience on the platform.

A company spokeswoman told Gizmodo that “we use the information people provide to offer a more personalized experience, including showing more relevant ads.” Shockingly, the spokeswoman pointed out that people can set up two-factor authentication without offering their phone numbers -- something not many aware of.

The revelation was first reported by Gizmodo as well as researchers from Northeastern and Princeton Universities.

2FA is a login method that requires users to enter NOT only their username and password, but also a second piece of information to ensure authenticity of users.



Gizmodo and the researchers also found that Facebook can collect and share your information even if another Facebook user uploads their contacts with your info included.

Gizmodo reported -- Researchers at Northwestern uploaded a list of hundreds of landline numbers from Northeastern University. These are numbers that people who work for Northeastern are unlikely to have added to their accounts, though it’s very likely that the numbers would be in the address books of people who know them and who might have uploaded them to Facebook in order to “find friends.” The researchers found that many of these numbers could be targeted with ads, and when they ran an ad campaign, the ad turned up in the Facebook news feed of Mislove, whose landline had been included in the file; I confirmed this with my own test targeting his landline number.

What this means is that even if you don’t want Facebook to allow advertisers to target you by your phone number, Facebook is still finding a way to let advertisers target you by your phone number and other personal details. This is even true if you literally don’t give Facebook your phone number. If you gave Facebook a fake email account when you signed up, behind the scenes, they know what your real email account is.

This immoral practice by Facebook is in existence despite of the Facebook reiterating statements where it says that the company is transparent regarding its ads policies.

Nevertheless, concerned Facebook users, instead of giving phone numbers, can opt to choose alternate methods as 2FA like Google Authenticator or Duo Security Inc. However these options was only made available in May 2018, before which Facebook required mobile numbers for 2FA.

Twitter Password Change Advice Depicts Anxious Digital Communications Industry, says GlobalData

Yesterday, Jack Dorsey disclosed that more than 330,000,000 passwords had been left unencrypted on an internal Twitter server. Post this, follows a Twitter’s password change recommendation which depicts a jumpy, anxious digital communications industry, says leading data and analytics company GlobalData.

The advice for 330 million users to change their passwords comes at a time when the digital communications industry is facing intense scrutiny over the storage and protection of personal data online, after a series of security breaches at Equifax, Facebook and Uber Technologies.

Emma Mohr-McClune, Service Director of Global Telecom Consumer Services, Platforms and Devices at GlobalData, says: “Most social media platforms, notably Twitter, have already made significant steps to identity and shut down tens of thousands of bots, as it’s now recognized that bot-driven public opinion hacking had a hand in the 2016 US Presidential election.”

The worry is that access to millions of real Twitter password accounts could give tomorrow’s democracy hackers the ultimate follow-up.

“It’s a digital doomsday scenario. But in this day and age, it’s one that we all – including Twitter – need to be taking seriously. As advised, users should change their passwords. But social media platforms should also be thinking about how to communicate the discovery of vulnerabilities in their security systems”.

Twitter CTO Parag Agrawal explained that passwords were written to an internal log before completing the hashing process due to a bug.

However, there was never any indication that the file of users’ account passwords in question had been misplaced, stolen, or shared with a third party.

Mohr-McClune adds: “The fact that it existed at all triggered the kind of mass security warning most digital communications providers would prefer not to have to deliver at all, especially not while the Facebook data privacy scandal is still ongoing.

Agrawal sent mixed messages regarding the password change recommendation, suggesting in one Tweet that the communication to users was probably surplus to requirement, but was nevertheless ‘the right thing to do.

He retracted that in a later Tweet, saying: ’I should not have said we didn’t have to share. I have felt strongly that we should. My mistake.’

“The episode is symptomatic of the extreme jumpiness in the digital industry sector right now. No one can afford another data breach scandal. It also points to the need for social media platform leadership to think through their public communications and password change recommendation processes for all vulnerability scenarios.”

Privacy Breach By Official App of India's PM Found To Be True

After a French security researcher Elliot Alderson claimed in a series of tweets that official mobile app of Indian PM Narendra Modi is sending personal information of its users to a third party website in.wzrkt.com, various media outlets fact-checked his claim and found it to be TRUE. Notably on Android alone, the Narendra Modi App is downloaded over five million times.

When you create a profile in the official @narendramodi #Android app, all your device info (OS, network type, Carrier …) and personal data (email, photo, gender, name, …) are send without your consent to a third-party domain called https://t.co/N3zA3QeNZO. pic.twitter.com/Vey3OP6hcf

— Elliot Alderson (@fs0c131y) March 23, 2018

One of the media outlets called Alt News has fact-checked the Alderson's claim, which can be read here and the video here is a live demonstration of the fact-check.

After Anderson tweeted about the privacy breach by PM's app, the privacy policy on PM Narendra Modi’s website has quietly been changed to accommodate for this lapse an cover-up this issue,. A screenshot of the present policy and policy on 23rd March (Before Anderson's Tweet) can be seen below.

[caption id="attachment_123662" align="aligncenter" width="699"] Privacy Policy on 23 March and before[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_123663" align="aligncenter" width="700"] Privacy Policy after Elliot Anderson's Tweet[/caption]

The changes to the privacy policy have been made in a way that attempts to avoid notice or attention since neither the verified Twitter account of the Prime Minister nor the verified account @narendramodi_in which claims to be the “Twitter account of http://www.narendramodi.in – Shri Narendra Modi’s personal website & the Narendra Modi Mobile App.” acknowledged the issue.

While the PM’s website (23 March) claimed that personal information would not be provided to third parties in any manner whatsoever without the consent of the user, it was doing exactly the opposite. These hurried changes to the privacy policy further go on to prove that there was a clear privacy breach by PM Narendra Modi’s mobile app.

The ruling BJP however has denied the allegations and said the data was being used only for analytics to offer all users the "most contextual content".

In an another media report, the reporter used a popular tool called Burp Suite in order to trace where the data was being sent. The findings showed that as a user kept entering personal information such as name, email address, gender and city, the data was being shared with the website in.wzrkt.com. According to the Whois information, the domain in.wzrkt.com belonged to a company called WizRocket Inc which is registered in California and the data is being sent to a server in Mumbai. WizRocket is a data analytics platform developed by a US-India based company called CleverTap, which is a startup founded by Indian entrepreneurs - Anand Jain, Sunil Thomas and Suresh Kondamudi in 2013 (Just a year back when Narendra Modi became PM). Clevertap is backed by Sequoia, Accel Partners and and Japan's Recruit Holdings.

Experts say that data shared with political parties is prone to misuse. Srinivas Kodali, a cybersecurity expert said in a statement to NDTV, "It can be misused by sharing with private companies like Cambridge Analytica which could build voter profiles of volunteers who are active through the Narendra Modi application."

IndianWeb2 has sent an email to CleverTap for their responses and is yet to receive them. The story shall be updated once a response is received.

It is to be noted that before tweeting about privacy breach of PM's official app, Elliot Alderson has previously highlighted vulnerabilities in India's national identity card project Aadhaar.

Last August, whistle-blower agency Wikileaks released a report wherein it stated that US-based Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is using tools devised by US-based technology provider Cross Match Technologies for cyber spying that may have comprised entire database of India’s Aadhaar having data of over 1.2 million Indian citizen.

India's Database of Over 1 Billion People Sparks Privacy Leak Debate

Who knew a random tweet has the potential of sending an entire nation into a frenzy. Well, that's exactly what happened on February 3, 2017 when a single tweet send out the nation with the second-largest population in a state of shock and panic at the same time. The tweet that showed random citizens being identified on a street via Aadhaar, India's ubiquitous database that boosts of having the biometric information of more than a billion Indians was sent out by the Twitter handle @India_Stack.

Ever since being posted, the tweet managed to garner a lot of eyeballs, mostly angry emotions from the Indian netizens, which eventually forced the account to take down the tweet. Offering a clarification on the tweet, @India_Stack posted that the previously posted tweet contained an image of the Home page of the OnGrid website, a privately owned company that India Stack, the infrastructure built by the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) has brought on board to tap into the world's largest biometrics system, conjuring images of Minority Report style surveillance. According to the clarification tweeted, the previous tweet was removed based on community feedback.

This particular incident has ignited a fierce debate among the Indian citizens about privacy and security of their data with the government.

Aadhaar was formulated way back in 2008 as an ambitious project with an aim of changing the prospects of Indians. The government was pushed to think about this project when it realised that a lot of people in India didn't have a legit birth or school certificate, hence they had no way to prove their identity. The government also realised this was the reason for the famous "leakage” in the government subsidy fundings as before the funds could reach the right people, they were being siphoned off by middlemen who took the advantage of the situation.

Considered similar to US's Social Security number, Aadhaar's implications are however considered further reaching.

Initially, the government said that it will be primarily using this optional program for helping the poor in the country who are in dire need of services such as grocery and other household items at subsidized rates.

In 2016, exactly eight years since its inception, Aadhar, which stores identity information such as a photo, name, address, fingerprints and iris scans of its citizens and also assigns them with a unique 12-digit number, has gone on to become the world's largest biometrics based identity system with over 1.11 billion people of the country's roughly 1.3 billion citizens enrolled in the biometrics system. According to the Indian government, about 99 percent of the adult population in India have an Aadhaar card.

While on the paper, Aadhaar still remains an optional program, but its significance in the practical world is undeniable. According to the government, the project has already helped it save it as much as $5 billion so far.

While the government might have conceived Aadhaar with an intention of helping the Indian poor, but eight years later, the project is doing much more than that. The government's UPI (Unified Payment Interface) project is making use of Aadhaar to help the country's unbanked population to avail financial services for the first time.

One of the most recent applications of Aadhaar that country saw was BHIM, the unified app for UPI-based payments launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on December 30th last year. .

BHIM in the BHIM app stands for Bharat Interface for Money. The app, which topped the Google Play Store charts in India just a few days after its launch, has been named BHIM after Babasaheb Dr. Bhimrao Ambedkar.

The app allows payments via the United Payments Interface (UPI), which makes sure that money is debited or credited directly to a user’s bank account. For those users who don't have UPI on their bank accounts yet, BHIM also supports transfers via MMID and IFSC code. UPI payments is preferred as against any other method as it only requires a Virtual Payee Address and a user doesn’t have to remember and share his/her bank details, thus reducing the risks of any fraud or theft.

The BHIM app binds together with the user’s device and mobile number. The users are required to set up a pin to login into the BHIM app each time they want to use it. There's another pin called the UPI Pin, which is required to carry out the transactions on the app.

It's next phase is called Aadhaar Enabled Payments System that will be doing away with the need for smartphones. It will reportedly allow people to make payments by just swiping their fingers on special terminals equipped with fingerprint sensors rather than swiping their credit or debit cards.

The year 2016 also saw the government recommending people to download the DigiLocker app, which is a digital cloud service, that any citizen in India can avail using their Aadhaar information. People can use the app to store their driver license documents and be relieved from the burden of carrying the paper documents every time you step out of the house.

The government's future plans for Aadhaar also includes handing out "health cards" to senior citizens of the country, which will be mapped to their Aadhaar number and store all their medical records, which the doctors can access from anywhere and everywhere.

According to Ravi Shankar Prasad, India’s IT minister, "Aadhaar is an instrument for good governance. Aadhaar is the mode to reach the poor without the middlemen."

While the IT minister might consider it as an instrument of good governance, there have been multiple reports since the program's inception which have suggested fake and bogus entries in the world's largest biometrics based identity system.

According to experts, the fake entries are testimonial of the fact that the Aadhaar database has never been verified or audited.

According to a statement given by Rajeev Chandrasekhar, MP and privacy advocate, to Mashable India, “There are two fundamental flaws in Aadhaar: it is poorly designed, and it being poorly verified." He further added, “Aadhaar isn’t foolproof, and this has resulted in fake data get into the system. This in turn opens new gateways for money launderers."

Chandrasekhar also believes that the absence of a firm legislation to safeguard the privacy and rights of all the billion people who have willingly enrolled into the biometric system is another major concern associated with the program.

Many security experts agree with Chandrasekhar and add that Aadhaar doesn’t make use of basic principles of cryptography, and much of its security is not known.

While we're still battling and debating with the privacy and security concerns associated with Aadhaar, the Indian government is pushing to make it more useful in the lives of the general public. The UIDAI had recently created what it is calling India Stack, an infrastructure through which government bodies as well as private entities could make use of Aadhaar's database of individual identities. This was the initial root of the whole privacy debate, followed by the tweet by India Stack which escalated the matter to a whole new level.

While OnGrid has clarified that the picture tweeted by India Stack was for representation purposes only, but the lack of information from the UIDAI and India Stack is only adding to the problems of the citizens. There have also been intense debates regarding the conflict of interest between the privately held companies and the ones who helped design the framework of Aadhaar.

9 Things You Should Never Share Or Post On Social Media

Social media has become a way of life for a majority of us. It is where we go when we're happy, sad, bored or frustrated. It is where the lines between introverts and extroverts are blurred. It is where people from all ages, gender, religion and sexuality can voice their opinions. While social media has for sure given us a platform to pour our hearts out and share what's going in our lives with the rest of the world, unfortunately a certain percentage of social media users have crossed the line of sharing and over-sharing. The recent Kim Kardashian Paris robbery has once again sprung open the debate on online privacy and security. In order to make sure that you don't end up in the category of being an over-sharer, here's how you can find out:

1) Vacation Plans

If you have a habit of announcing your vacation plans online even before boarding that plane, it is time to change to that. You can let everyone know about your vacation once you're back by uploading the pictures of your wonderful vacation. Till then refrain from having a vacation countdown or letting people know whom you're going with, where you're going to and for how long you're going to.

2) Home address/ current location

This is a strict no-no. Sharing your home address or current location on social media is almost similar to inviting trouble by keeping the front gate of your house open. Make sure your location feature is off on all your social media accounts.

3) Your Relationship troubles

Washing your dirty linen in public is never a good idea. Human relations are complex. While one day you might be having a good day, there could be days that the boat could be a little rocky. So, it is better to refrain from sharing your relationship troubles on the Internet and providing fodder to all the gossip mongers.

4) Winning lottery tickets

Picture this, you just won a huge amount of money courtesy a lottery, and your immediate response was to share this news with everyone on your social media platform. You might feel that your good days are here, but the minute you step out to collect your lottery money you end up getting kidnapped again. Yes, this has actually happened and is not a scene out of a Bollywood movie. So, better be safe than sorry.

5) Statements that can be used against you later

Always remember what you put out on social media is going to be there forever. So, be careful before making a strong statement against someone because it can very well comeback to haunt you later. In fact, there are a number of companies that do a background check of their applicant's social media platforms before hiring them.

6) Luxurious Living

While a lot of people do it unintentionally, showing off your cash, luxurious items, cars, mansions etc. can end up being an easy research for a robber. So, evaluate your past social media platforms updates and see if you're unintentionally showing off your hard-earnings. And well, if you're doing it intentionally, well it is time to stop right away.

7) Family issues

Your family issues don't need to make the headlines of your social media newsfeed. Keep your family life as private as possible for the betterment/safety of you and your family.

8) Nude/Explicit contents of you

While all these social media platforms promise their users that they have the best privacy features at play, there are hackers that can always bypass all these privacy and security hurdle and use your private information/pictures against you. So, be very careful before sharing your nude/initiate pictures with anyone on your social media platforms.

9) Bank details

This one is easy. Posting your bank details on social media can become an easy access point for hackers to ease their way into your accounts and finally your money. So, under no circumstance should you share your bank details online.

[Top Image-Shutterstock]

Facebook Will Now Let You Know If The Govt. Is Snooping On Your Account

Security and privacy have become the two biggest vices of social media. There are a majority of people getting off the net in order to make sure that their private life remains private.

Facebook, the social networking giant, is trying its level best to curb these numbers. In a effort in this do so, the social network has announced that it will soon sending banner notifications to anyone whose account's security might be in danger by the government or if company suspects someone is trying to hack into it.



Announcing the same in a blog post, Facebook said that the privacy of its users is on its priority list.

While we have always taken steps to secure accounts that we believe to have been compromised, we decided to show this additional warning if we have a strong suspicion that an attack could be government-sponsored. We do this because these types of attacks tend to be more advanced and dangerous than others, and we strongly encourage affected people to take the actions necessary to secure all of their online accounts," read an excerpt from the blogpost.

These banner notifications will only be exclusive to people whose account's privacy have been compromised and seeing such a banner doesn't mean Facebook on the whole has been compromised.

While we hope each one of you reading this article never ever gets to see one of these notifications but even if you do, don't panic, just change your password and you're sorted.

Kudos to you Facebook!