Meta Expands Facebook Protect Program to Activists, Journalists, Government Officials

Meta, the company formerly known as Facebook, on Thursday
announced^[1]
an expansion of its Facebook Protect security program to include
human rights defenders, activists, journalists, and government
officials who are more likely to be targeted by bad actors across
its social media platforms.

“These people are at the center of critical communities for
public debate,” said Nathaniel Gleicher, head of security policy at
Meta. “They enable democratic elections, hold governments and
organizations accountable, and defend human rights around the
world. Unfortunately this also means that they are highly targeted
by bad actors.”

Facebook Protect^[2], currently being
launched globally in phases, enables users who enroll for the
initiative to adopt stronger account security protections, like
two-factor authentication (2FA), and watch out for potential
hacking threats. Meta said more than 1.5 million accounts have
enabled Facebook Protect to date, of which nearly 950,000 accounts
turned on 2FA since it began widely rolling out the feature in
September 2021.

The program is analogous to Google’s own Advanced Protection
Program (APP^[3]), which aims to
safeguard users with high visibility and sensitive information and
are at risk of targeted online attacks by preventing unauthorized
account takeover attempts and incorporating stringent checks before
downloading files and software on Chrome and Gmail.

People who may be eligible for Facebook Protect are expected to
be notified via a prompt on Facebook, along with an option to turn
on the advanced security features as well as identify any potential
issues — e.g., lack of a strong password — that could be abused to
gain access to the accounts.

The move also arrives weeks after Apple outlined^[4]
plans to send threat notifications to alert users it believes have
been targeted by state-sponsored attackers. Notifications will be
delivered^[5]
to affected users via email and iMessage notifications to the
addresses and phone numbers associated with the users’ Apple IDs,
and a prominent “Threat Notification” banner will be displayed at
the top of the page when impacted users log into their accounts on
the Apple ID web portal appleid.apple[.]com.