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Facebook crashed this evening, leaving millions of users without access to their personal data.

The site, which claims to have 1.23bn monthly users, displayed an error message to users who were trying to log on.

In a rare outage, visitors to the Facebook website just after 8pm UK time were greeted with a message reading "sorry something went wrong. We're working on it and we'll get it fixed as soon as we can."

Read more: How to keep functioning when Facebook crashes

It is the SECOND TIME Facebook has been down recently after the site crashed last Thursday.

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Founder Mark Zuckerberg once gave advice to business founders by saying: "Move fast and break things. Unless you are breaking stuff, you are not moving fast enough."

In a post on his Facebook page, he wrote: "To keep the internet strong, we need to keep it secure.

"That's why at Facebook we spend a lot of our energy making our services and the whole internet safer and more secure.

Read our guide to backing up your Facebook data in case the social network melts down.

Facebook by numbers 802m Average daily users $2.5bn Advertising revenue (Q1 2014) 48% Percentage of 18-34 year old users who check Facebook when they wake up

"We encrypt communications, we use secure protocols for traffic, we encourage people to use multiple factors for authentication and we go out of our way to help fix issues we find in other people's services.

"The internet works because most people and companies do the same. We work together to create this secure environment and make our shared space even better for the world."

In a post celebrating the site's 10th anniversary, he told users: "I'm so grateful to be able to help build these tools for you. I feel a deep responsibility to make the most of my time here and serve you the best I can."