Facebook scans 'paste sites' for leaked usernames and passwords

Facebook has a system in place to scan public ‘paste’ sites for email address and password combinations to stay one step ahead of possible leaks, according to The Register.

In a blog post entitled ‘Keeping Passwords Secure’, Chris Long, a Security Engineer at the social network outlined how the procedure works. “We built a system dedicated to further securing people’s Facebook accounts by actively looking for these public postings, analyzing them, and then notifying people when we discover that their credentials have shown up elsewhere on the Internet,” writes Long. “To do this, we monitor a selection of different ‘paste’ sites for stolen credentials and watch for reports of large scale data breaches. We collect the stolen credentials that have been publicly posted and check them to see if the stolen email and password combination matches the same email and password being used on Facebook.”

Facebook scans 'paste sites' for leaked usernames and passwords