Impact of Instagram privacy and security changes on WatchGuard Wi-Fi Cloud
Dear Wi-Fi Cloud User,
WatchGuard values the privacy of everyone's personal data, and we take steps to ensure security and data privacy throughout our products and company infrastructure. Instagram recently announced changes to their API usage to improve the privacy and security of Instagram users. As a result of these changes, WatchGuard is making the following updates to our Wi-Fi Cloud service.
What you need to know:
- Instagram has disabled their Legacy API permissions that Wi-Fi Cloud uses in Captive Portals authentication. Wi-Fi Cloud guest users that attempt to log in with their Instagram credentials will receive an error.
- A new Instagram Basic Display API is available via Facebook for Developers when you create an app; however, you cannot use data returned by this API to authenticate your users, including authentication to guest Wi-Fi Captive Portal splash pages. The app review process will reject your app if your app uses API data to authenticate users. If you require an authentication solution for your captive portal, Instagram recommends you use the Facebook authentication plug-in.
- As a result of these API changes, WatchGuard will remove the Instagram option for Captive Portal authentication in the next Wi-Fi Cloud update. In addition, WatchGuard will remove historical data for Instagram from the Analyze charts that track social media logins. These charts will still reflect data for all other plug-ins.
- After this update, guest users that attempt to use Instagram authentication will receive a message that explains the situation and requests that they use a different method to log in to Guest Wi-Fi.
Wi-Fi Cloud accounts that only use Instagram for Captive Portal authentication will need to edit their splash pages and update the authentication methods. If Instagram is one of several authentication methods available, we still recommend that Wi-Fi Cloud customers remove the Instagram plug-in from their splash page configuration.
Please contact WatchGuard Support if you have any additional questions.
Sincerely,
Your WatchGuard Wi-Fi Team
