What Facebook is telling advertisers about the latest hack that affected 50 million user accounts

Carolyn Everson

Facebook's sales chief Carolyn Everson said she spent Friday and the past weekend talking to advertisers about the latest cyber attack that affected 50 million user accounts.
Everson said that advertisers at large were very empathetic, as cyber attacks can hit anyone.
The advertiser reaction is very different from when the Cambridge Analytica crisis hit, said Everson, because Facebook has gone all out to take responsibility and fix things.

The spate of bad news continues for Facebook.

After Russian meddling in the 2016 elections and the Cambridge Analytica fiasco, a cyber attack impacted nearly 50 million Facebook user accounts, the company said on Friday.

But marketers aren't freaking out, and instead they're being empathetic, says Carolyn Everson, Facebook's vice president of global marketing solutions.

Speaking at Advertising Week New York, Everson said that she and her team spent Friday and the weekend contacting the company's advertisers, helping them understand the ramifications of the cyber attack. And while they had questions, most were understanding.

"There's empathy around the fact that we're all dealing with this incredible threat, and that at any given moment there can be a cyber attack on anyone," she said. "And certainly, we're not the only company to have had a situation like this."

On Tuesday, Facebook discovered that an unknown attacker, or attackers, had taken advantage of a security flaw to take over users' accounts. The flaw was related to the "View As" feature that lets people see what their own profile looks like through the eyes of another user, Facebook explained.

Everson called the attack "extremely intricate," likening it to an "odorless, weightless intruder" that walks into a house. She said that the attack was so sophisticated that it was very complicated for Facebook's security team to be able to detect it.

Facebook's business team put together a guide over the weekend listing certain steps clients could take to secure their accounts.

And Facebook's team encouraged advertisers to take a stock of admins on their accounts, as large brands tend to have several people that are admins across not just the company, but also at their agencies. Those brands looking to take extra precautions could log out and log back in, said Everson. Lastly, Facebook assured brands that their credit card information could not have been taken by the hackers.

"We do not store the full digits of the credit card number anywhere, and so that was of comfort as well," she said. "Mostly, they're just looking forward to us providing them updates."

This reaction is very different from when the Cambridge Analytica crisis hit, said Everson. And that's because that was something that could have been prevented.

"With Cambridge Analytica, the reaction was slightly different in that that was something that we felt we definitely should have prevented," she said. "We should have gone back and really checked that audit. The firm said that they deleted the data and they didn't and we didn't go back and check on that."

It also helps that Facebook has taken full responsibility for the previous goof-ups and has been proactive in communicating with advertisers, she said. And that's because it recognizes that the foundation of its business is trust from both consumers and marketers.

"At the end of the day we have a responsibility to people and to the marketers that utilize our platform — trust is one of those things that is earned every day by individual actions," she said. "There is no amount of time, energy, or effort that won't be expended in protecting people."

In fact, there is a massive cultural shift taking place within Facebook as far as the role it plays and its responsibility in regard to election integrity, the fight against fake news and data security is concerned, said Everson. She said it was a bigger shift than when the company embraced mobile.

"This is the most important cultural shift — recognizing our responsibility, taking very specific actions and doing everything we can. We have zero tolerance for all of this behavior, but there won't be zero occurrence," she said. "This is the most important thing that we're doing. Nothing else matters if we don't get this right."

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