Facebook outage takes a murkier turn

CALIFORNIA, USA: After being unable to access their accounts on the social networking site Facebook for more than a week, some users of the site are now seeing their accounts restored but with some data from their recent profile updates lost.

“The replacement of profiles and login screens with a 'down for maintenance' notice stemmed from a technical issue with a single database,” a Cnet report said citing Facebook.

In May this year, hackers had launched an attack on Facebook, gathering passwords from some of its users. Facebook spokesman Barry Schnitt had then said that the site was in the process of cleaning up damage from the attack. But this time the company has asserted the inconvenience was not due to hackers or other malicious activity.

Many of the complaints pertaining to the outage alleged poor customer service on Facebook's part, and as a sort of olive branch, the company is encouraging feedback pertaining to the specific outage. However, the company has also assured that the profiles would be restored over the course of the next day.

"Our engineering team has worked around the clock, and as of today, all of these users should begin to regain access to their Facebook accounts," Facebook spokeswoman Brandee Barker was quoted as saying.

Less than 0.05 per cent of Facebook's users – or 150,000 users since the total user count is 300 million - have been affected by the outage which started on October 3.