A bug in the new Download Your Data section of Instagram has made public the passwords of some users, here's what happened and how to solve the problem
If you are also among the millions of Italian users who use Instagram, you may soon be forced to change your password. A bug of the social platform, in fact, has made public the passwords of many users registered on the platform, making life easier for cybercriminals who usually try to steal the online identity of users.
The bug, in a somewhat ironic way, has affected the new privacy system designed by Instagram to comply with the European General Data Protection Regulation. Since the entry into force of the GDPR Instagram has created a new feature, called Download Your Data, which, as you can guess from the name, serves users to download all the various personal information present within the Instagram servers. A very useful section for the management of our online data, but it turned out to be a double-edged sword since it allows everyone, including malicious, to see the passwords that protect, or rather should protect, our Instagram profile.
Security flaw Instagram: what happened
To download your photos, your Stories and comments left on Instagram you use a URL automatically generated by the platform. Due to the bug, however, the link could also be viewed by other people. The vulnerability has particularly affected users who have associated their Instagram profile with that of Facebook because the two social platforms use the same servers as they are both part of Mark Zuckerberg's group.
Instagram has stated that it has already fixed the problem and that the bug has affected a small number of people who will be notified of the new security flaw through a custom alert. In any case, our advice to improve the protection of our Instagram account is to access the settings of the social media and change the access password, perhaps choosing a very complex one such as passphrases. This is an operation that takes a few minutes but could secure our Instagram profile and the information contained within it.