Meta announced on Thursday that it is expanding its Facebook Protect service -- which provides specialized security services for certain accounts being targeted by hackers -- to more countries.
Nathaniel Gleicher, head of security policy at Meta, said the company will be rolling out Facebook Protect services to more than 50 countries by the end of the year after enrolling over 1.5 million accounts since starting an expansion of the service in September.
The program was started in 2018 and expanded during the 2020 US election cycle to include human rights defenders, journalists, and government officials who are highly targeted by hackers. Both Google[1] and Microsoft[2] have created similar programs for groups that tend to be targeted by both cybercriminals and government hackers.
Gleicher noted that of the 1.5 million accounts that have been signed up, almost 950,000 have two-factor authentication. He added that no action is required unless you are prompted to enroll.
"These people are at the center of critical communities for public debate. They enable democratic elections, hold governments and organizations accountable, and defend human rights around the world," Gleicher said.
"Unfortunately this also means that they are highly targeted by bad actors. Facebook Protect helps these groups of people adopt stronger account security protections, like two-factor authentication, and monitors for potential hacking threats".
Facebook will be expanding the program to include countries like the US, India, Portugal and others.
He urged everyone to enable two-factor authentication for their Facebook accounts but noted that the company wanted to make it as "frictionless as possible" for accounts from journalists, activists, political candidates and others. In some cases they require that users have it.
"What we've seen so far is encouraging: in early testing, simplifying our enrollments flows, improving customer support, and mandating