Dangerous personal data from 533 million Facebook users leaked online
10 Apr 2021
A user published personal data of about half a billion facebook users inside a publicly accessible hacking forum on Saturday. Some of this information include phone numbers, profile names, Facebook ID numbers, location, job data as well as email addresses of users from over 106 different countries.
The source of the data leak has yet to be determined while Facebook has commented that the leak came from its previous 2019 data breach. The company has also noted that any vulnerability has been corrected since September 2019. In a blogpost published on Tuesday, Facebook attributes the stolen data to the contact importer feature where people can find their friends via their contact numbers.
The statement assured, "While we can’t always prevent data sets like these from recirculating or new ones from appearing, we have a dedicated team focused on this work".
Alon Gal, the Chief Technology Officer of the cybercrime intelligence firm Hudson Rock, posted about the data leak on twitter on Saturday. The post took place after a user within the forum advertised an automated bot that can access hundreds of millions phone numbers. Gal also warned that the information may be used in scams and hackings as well as marketing ploys. The data of 86,337 Maldivian Facebook users have been reportedly leaked.