Facebook bug bounty hunters handed $40,000

Facebook has paid out $40,000 to bug hunters in just three weeks of kicking off its security initiative.

The social networking giant revealed yesterday one person had been handed $7,000 for uncovering six security issues.

What we think...

After seven years, it seems like Facebook is truly getting to grips with security and privacy.

With the emergence of the bounty programme, as well as the recent notable changes to privacy, users can start to feel more than safe on Facebook. Businesses will be fretting a little less about their pages being compromised too.

Tom Brewster, Senior Staff Writer

One report alone received $5,000, so Facebook is seeing through on its promise to reward significant findings with big money.

"It has been fascinating to watch the roll-out of this program from inside Facebook. First, it has been amazing to see how independent security talent around the world has mobilised to help," said Facebook chief security officer Joe Sullivan, in a blog post.

"We know and have relationships with a large number of security experts, but this program has kicked off dialogue with a whole new and ever expanding set of people across the globe in over 16 countries, from Turkey to Poland who are passionate about internet security."

Despite calls for a move to extend the bug bounty programme to Facebook applications, Sullivan said it simply wouldn't be workable due to the significant number of companies working on content for the social network.

"But we do care deeply about security on the Platform. We have a dedicated Platform Operations team that scrutinises these partners and we frequently audit their security and privacy practices," he added.

"Additionally, we have built a number of backend tools that help automatically detect and disable spammy or malicious applications."

Facebook has been upping its privacy and security game this year.

Earlier this month, it launched the first ever Guide to Facebook Security.