{"id":570064,"date":"2022-03-22T10:25:46","date_gmt":"2022-03-22T08:25:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=570064"},"modified":"2022-03-22T10:26:16","modified_gmt":"2022-03-22T08:26:16","slug":"some-south-africans-will-be-blocked-from-using-facebook-unless-they-agree-to-new-privacy-changes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/internet\/570064\/some-south-africans-will-be-blocked-from-using-facebook-unless-they-agree-to-new-privacy-changes\/","title":{"rendered":"Some South Africans will be blocked from using Facebook unless they agree to new privacy changes"},"content":{"rendered":"

Meta will require some users to accept its new security programme’s terms and conditions to continue using Facebook in the coming weeks.<\/p>\n

Dubbed ‘Facebook Protect’, the security programme is aimed at groups of people that are more likely to be targeted by malicious hackers, such as human rights defenders, journalists, and government officials.<\/p>\n

“With Facebook Protect, we worked to make enrollment and use of two-factor authentication as frictionless as possible for these groups of people by providing better user experience and support,” it said.<\/p>\n

“We\u2019re also starting to require that they use it. We know that there will always be a small subset of users that won\u2019t immediately enrol, for example, those that happen to be less active on our platform at the time of a given mandate.”<\/p>\n

While the Facebook Protect program has historically only applied to users in America and Europe, the social media network has now been sending warning emails to users in South Africa about the change.<\/p>\n

Several BusinessTech readers have reached out to check the veracity of these emails which initially appeared as spam. The email seen indicated a lock-out will happen from the end of March and the start of April if users do not agree to the terms and conditions.<\/p>\n

“Two-factor authentication \u2014 particularly by using third-party authentication apps \u2014 significantly improves the security of your online accounts. Right now, anyone can enrol in two-factor authentication and everyone should.<\/p>\n

“However, this important feature has been historically underutilized across the internet \u2014 even by people that are more likely to be targeted by malicious hackers, such as journalists, activists, political candidates and others,” Facebook said.<\/p>\n

Below is an example of the email being sent to some Facebook users:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Nathaniel Gliecher, head of security policy at Meta, said the group was working to ensure the change was frictionless as possible.<\/p>\n

“We\u2019re continuing to improve the enrollment process and notifications to avoid confusion and will keep iterating. Part of our goal is to get everyone in these communities protected by baseline security measures,” he said.<\/p>\n

“We\u2019re looking into isolated examples where people may need help enrolling in the program. Thank you for your patience and we really appreciate people taking steps to secure their accounts.”<\/p>\n

\n

Read: New internet laws for South Africa \u2013 and the case about online comments you should know about<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Meta will require some users to accept new security terms and conditions to continue using Facebook in the coming weeks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":176117,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9882],"tags":[45,26],"class_list":["post-570064","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-internet","tag-facebook","tag-headline"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/570064","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=570064"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/570064\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":570096,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/570064\/revisions\/570096"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/176117"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=570064"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=570064"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=570064"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}