Facebook Will Warn You If The Government Hacks Your Account

Now here's a move that's bound to rub governments up the wrong way. Because "anti-terrorism measures".

Facebook has come out in support of little guys across the globe, with its chief security officer Alex Stamos stating that the site will warn users if their information is at risk of a "government-sponsored" hack.

"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," wrote Stamos in a blog post. "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."

This is what will pop up on your Facebook account if the site believes you're at risk:

"To protect the integrity of our methods and processes, we often won't be able to explain how we attribute certain attacks to suspected attackers," continues Stamos. "That said, we plan to use this warning only in situations where the evidence strongly supports our conclusion. We hope that these warnings will assist those people in need of protection, and we will continue to improve our ability to prevent and detect attacks of all kinds against people on Facebook."

However, governments will still be able to request personal information from Facebook with good cause if they go through official channels - the sort of processes that allow states to gain information on potentially dangerous suspects. Facebook won't tell you about those kind of actions, because they aren't 'hacks'.

In short - just behave yourselves out there, okay? Play nice.

[Via: Facebook]

(Image: Shutterstock)

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