Facebook and Instagram had some issues on March 5, causing both services to go offline. Users experienced problems with Instagram not loading and being logged out of their Facebook sessions. This raised concerns among many users about potential hacking. Let’s find out if these worries are valid and understand what actually happened.
Facebook and Instagram Down
Meta’s services, Facebook and Instagram, faced problems starting around 10:45 am EST. Users began reporting difficulties accessing the apps. Personally, when I tried to log into my Facebook on my MacBook at 11:26 am EST, I was prompted to log in again. Additionally, my Instagram iPhone app wasn’t loading, and a message saying “couldn’t load posts” appeared. Approximately 500,000 Facebook users encountered problems, as indicated by a spike on Down Detector during mid-morning.
Are Facebook and Instagram hacked?
Nope, not this time. They’re just going through a rough patch, causing an outage. Jake Moore, the friendly cybersecurity advisor at ESET, says Facebook has a history of hiccups, and while a cyber-attack is unlikely, it’s never entirely ruled out.
Good ol’ Meta, the owner of Facebook, confirmed the issue on Twitter (formerly X), assuring everyone they’re on it. A kind Meta spokesperson even sent an email update, explaining that a technical glitch messed things up earlier today, making it tricky to access some services. But fear not, they’ve fixed it now and are sorry for any hassle it caused. It happens to the best of us!
Breaking down the Meta outage, experts from Cisco’s ThousandEyes Internet Intelligence team took a closer look to give us the lowdown on what went wrong.
According to these tech detectives, the hiccup at Meta was likely tied to a problem with a backend service, maybe something like authentication. The ThousandEyes team, always keeping an eye on internet services globally, found that Meta’s web servers were still reachable, and everything seemed fine on the network side. But here’s the twist – when users tried to log in, they got error messages. This led the experts to suspect that the issue was lurking in the backend, possibly with the authentication process.
Around 16:50 UTC (8:50 am PST), ThousandEyes noticed Meta services slowly bouncing back, and many users could happily get back into the application. By 18:40 UTC 10:40 am PST, it seemed like the problem had been sorted out, according to the researchers.
However, on March 6, some folks are still sharing that they can’t access their accounts, hinting that there might be some lingering gremlins in the Facebook system. Tech troubles, they just love to stick around, don’t they?
Facebook and Instagram Security
When Facebook and Instagram are working again, don’t forget to log in once more. To make things super secure, think about using a password helper like 1Password or Bitwarden. Jake Moore, our cybersecurity expert, says if you can’t remember your password when you log in after everything’s back to normal, you can create a fresh and special one with the help of a password helper.
And here’s a cool trick for extra safety – set up two-factor authentication. It’s like adding an extra lock to make sure your Facebook and Instagram accounts stay safe from any tricky business. Take care and stay safe online!