If you have a Facebook account , you should probably be keeping your sentry duty up in the near future tense . Anew reportstates that a hacker has posted the private information , including phone numbers , natal day , and positioning , of more than 533 million Facebook substance abuser from 106 countries online for complimentary .
According toInsider , the cyberpunk was part of a grim level hacking meeting place and posted the data on Saturday . The information divulge reportedly also includes Facebook IDs , full name , bios , and , in some cases , email addresses . The datum accessed is purportedly from 2019 . Insider state that the leaked data included information on 32 million users in the U.S. , 11 million users in the UK , and 6 million user in India .
The outlet reviewed a sample distribution of the leak data and swan a serial of record “ by rival have it away Facebook exploiter ’ phone numbers game with the IDs list in the information exercise set . ” Insider also confirm the data ’s truth by typing in exposed email addresses into Facebook ’s password reset feature film , which shows part of a user ’s earpiece bit .
Photo: Josh Edelson / AFP (Getty Images)
Gizmodo reach out to Facebook to confirm the report , but we had not hear back by the meter of issue . The company told Insider that the data was scraped due to a vulnerability it patched in 2019 .
The fact that the information seems to have been get via scraping is bind to rattle some nerves at Facebook , which has face outrage over scrape incident in the past . The most infamous scraping incident has been theCambridge Analytica scandal , in which the analytics house harvest user data of one thousand thousand of user without their consent and used it to predict and mold user at the poll .
Liz Bourgeois , managing director of strategic response communications at Facebook , repeated thison Twitteron Saturday .
“ This is old data that was previously reported on in 2019 . We find and fixed this publication in August 2019 , ” she say .
While Facebook appear to be hear to use the 2019 sentence nog to downplay the impact of the leak , Insider explains that bad histrion can still do damage with quondam data . Alon Gal , co - founder and CTO of Israeli cybercrime intelligence firmHudson Rock , told the electric receptacle that a database of that sizing would result in criminal read advantage of the information to carry out social engineering attacks or hacks .
Gal was the one who first key out the leak Facebook data on Saturday , per Insider . This was n’t the first clip he make love of the database ’s being , though . Back in January , Gal sounded the dismay on a hacker that had created a Telegram bot that allowed people to find phone number for specific Facebook accounts via the leaked data set for a fee . Gal informedMotherboardat the time , which confirm the data ’s legitimacy .
The cybersecurity expert tell there ’s not much Facebook can do to help exploiter at this full point since the data is already out there besides letting them know it happened and distinguish them to be on the spotter for scams .
However , there are still some doubt unanswered . Even if this datum is from 2019 , what does this really mean for users ? Insider was capable to supposedly equalize phone numbers with IDs in the leak data set now . In fact , I know friends that have had the same phone number for over a decade . What can user do in this site ? Do they need to do anything ?
These are doubt that I have in 2021 , and I do n’t give care if the data is from 2019 .
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