‘View as Public’ option for Facebook users live again after major vulnerability last year

Last fall, Facebook discovered a major flaw with its “View as” feature which saw security tokens for 50 million accounts stolen. Facebook has today announced its security review of the incident is complete and has brought back the View as Public feature in addition to adding a quick button to “Edit Public Details.”

As spotted by The Verge, Facebook announced the news in an update to the security blog post as well as on Twitter.

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.”

While the “View as Public” feature has returned, the “View as Specific Person” feature won’t be coming back, which is where the flaw originated. With Facebook sharing such a brief update, it sounds like no more than the previously accounted for 50 million users were affected by the vulnerability.

The Twitter post explains that another new option for users is to quickly edit their public details from their profile page. The screenshot below on the left shows the new edit button on profiles and the right image shows the reenabled “View as Public” feature on iPhone.

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

— Meta (@Meta) May 14, 2019

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