Facebook Acknowledges Error That Locked Some Users Out of Their Accounts

A number of Facebook users across the globe on Friday and Saturday were locked out of their accounts due to an error in the system, triggering a security threat among those affected, a report said on Saturday.

According to the report in Mashable, Facebook was quick to assure that the problem was a technical one and there was no security problems.

"An error in one of our systems designed to help prevent suspicious account access sent a small set of people to our account recovery flow unnecessarily," a Facebook spokesperson was quoted as saying.

"We have fixed the issue and are in the process of clearing the affected accounts from this recovery flow," it added.

However, it could not be verified how many accounts were affected due to the snag on Friday. Facebook also clarified to the publication that the error was not due to the Cloudflare leak that was recently patched by the content delivery network and Internet security services provider. Unofficially christened Cloudbleed, the bug was similar to Heartbleed in that it leaked user data.

Notably, users of various Google services were affected by a Google Accounts engine issue and were similarly locked out earlier this week.

Separately, Facebook announced on Saturday it has recorded 300 billion Reactions on posts and the Love reaction was used maximum times by its over 1.79 billion users.

On February 24 last year, Facebook enhanced conversations by implementing Reactions - a group of emojis that has Love, Haha, Wow, Sad and Angry emoticons - that joined the famous Like button.

Written with inputs from IANS