Facebook testing Messenger feature to spot suspicious accounts

IANS  |  San Francisco 

is testing a feature that will identify malicious accounts sending unwanted direct messages to you on its platform.

According to a report in Motherboard on Wednesday, the feature when it goes live will provide additional information about direct messages from unknown contacts.

"We are testing a way to provide people with more context on folks they may not have connected with previously," Facebook's team told Motherboard.

The feature is geared up to fight scams and unsolicited messages from accounts using fake or misleading identities.

"It can notify a user when an unsolicited message was sent from a account that's not paired with an official one," The Verge reported.

is grappling with privacy issues like the Cambridge Analytica data scandal involving 87 million users and another bug that changed 14 million users' privacy setting defaults to public.

In yet another privacy goof-up, Facebook has admitted that over 800,000 users were affected by a bug on its platform and Messenger that unblocked some people these users had blocked.

--IANS

na/in

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)

First Published: Wed, July 11 2018. 09:26 IST