Facebook Brings Back "View As Public" After 2018 Security Issues

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Facebook announced it is restoring the option for users to view their profile from the perspective of someone who they are not connecting to.

The option was deprecated in September 2018 due to a major security flaw. Attackers were able to steal access tokens for over 50 million accounts. This resulted in Facebook logging out and forcing over 90 million users to log back into their accounts to ensure they were secure.

Facebook announced it was restoring the feature in a tweet that also hinted as a new feature dubbed “edit public details” that will allow users to choose what the people they are not connected to can see on their profiles.

Today, we're making it easier for people to manage their publicly visible information on Facebook with two updates: (1) we’re bringing back the “View As Public” feature and (2) we’re adding an “Edit Public Details” button directly to profiles. pic.twitter.com/zI5bVwodjp
— Facebook (@facebook) May 14, 2019

“We have completed our security review and are re-enabling the version of the ‘View As’ feature that lets people see what their profile looks like to people they aren’t friends with on Facebook. This version was unaffected by the security incident and was significantly more popular than ‘View as Specific Person.’”

The latter feature was directly responsible for the security flaw and is not being restored for the moment.