The phone numbers and personal data of more than 553 million Facebook users were posted online for free by a user on a low-level hacking forum, according to Business Insider. At least 100 countries are included in this leak, with data for 32 million users in the United States and 11 million users in the United Kingdom.
This breach includes phone numbers, Facebook IDs, full names, locations, dates of birth, biographies and, in some cases, email addresses.
Insider analyzed a sample of the leaked data and checked several records by comparing the phone numbers of known Facebook users with the IDs listed in the data set. We also checked the logs by testing email addresses from the dataset on Facebook’s password reset feature, which can be used to partially reveal a user’s phone number.
For Business Insider, Alon Gal, CTO of cybercrime intelligence firm Hudson Rock, who discovered the leaked data on Saturday, said:
“A database of this size containing private information, such as the phone numbers of many Facebook users, would certainly lead to criminals taking advantage of the data to carry out social engineering attacks. [or] hack attempts. “
It is not the first time that Facebook has leaked data from its online users. In 2020, Mark Zuckerberg’s company was involved in a controversial situation related to privacy issues and confirmed that thousands of developers were able to access data from inactive users, which is unexpected behavior.
Before that, there was the controversial Cambridge Analytica, in which the company not only had access to the data of those who gave permission to a third party ‘personality questionnaire’, but Facebook allowed the app some access to its friends’ data as well.
The company has yet to address this new data leak, but it could be the worst leak Facebook has ever made.
This morning, we reported that Apple CEO Tim Cook is being interviewed on Monday about the change in the company’s application tracking transparency policies. Cook will also talk about criticism from Parlor and Facebook about these tracking changes. The quote from the CEO of Apple no longer fit:
“Yes, Kara, I’m not focused on Facebook. So, I don’t know. “
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