Hacked data on more than 553 million Facebook users has been leaked online over the weekend, including a Facebook user’s names, dates of birth, relationship status, the city where they live, their workplace, and sometimes even email addresses. But the most sensitive data included in the leak is undoubtedly the phone numbers, which are often used for two-factor authentication. And now there’s a way to easily check if your phone number is leaking – at least if you live in the U.S.
The website The daily news has a simple tool where you can enter your phone number and see if it is leaking. Gizmodo tested the tool with some data from Facebook’s actual leak and found it to be accurate. For example, we tested Mark Zuckerberg’s phone number, which is included in the leak. It worked. (We assume that Zuck has already changed his phone number.)
All you need to do to check is enter your phone number without hyphens or periods. You also need to include the international country code at the beginning. For example, if you are used to seeing your phone number on this form, 555-212-0000, you should get rid of the hyphens and add the digit “one” to the front.
Using the same fake number above, the number you enter should look like this: 15552120000. If you include a variation other than the sequence of numbers, the tool will falsely say that your number is not included in the leak. In reality, it may well be.
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Facebook didn’t say much about the leak, accept that the information was hacked in 2019. The data was offered at hacker forums for a price two years ago, but what makes this weekend’s leak different is that the data has now been leaked for free. Anyone can find 16 GB of data with just a simple Google search.