Data of over 500 Million Facebook users leaked, including phone numbers, full names, location, email address, and biographical information

[arjunk]

533 million Facebook users' phone numbers and personal data have been leaked online

The data includes phone numbers, Facebook IDs, full names, locations, birthdates, bios, and, in some cases, email addresses.

www.businessinsider.com

This is pretty bad. Even I have access to this data. Best to change your passwords, even if you don't have a Facebook account as Facebook makes
"Ghost Profiles" of your activity and information using Like buttons on other websites such as these ones on PDF

Article:

• The personal data of over 500 million Facebook users has been posted online in a low-level hacking forum.
• The data includes phone numbers, full names, location, email address, and biographical information.
• Security researchers warn that the data could be used by hackers to impersonate people and commit fraud.
• See more stories on Insider's business page.

A user in a low level hacking forum on Saturday published the phone numbers and personal data of hundreds of millions of Facebook users for free online.

The exposed data includes personal information of over 533 million Facebook users from 106 countries, including over 32 million records on users in the US, 11 million on users in the UK, and 6 million on users in India. It includes their phone numbers, Facebook IDs, full names, locations, birthdates, bios, and — in some cases — email addresses.

Insider reviewed a sample of the leaked data and verified several records by matching known Facebook users' phone numbers with the IDs listed in the data set. We also verified records by testing email addresses from the data set in Facebook's password reset feature, which can be used to partially reveal a user's phone number.

A Facebook spokesperson told Insider that the data was scraped due to a vulnerability that the company patched in 2019.


While a couple of years old, the leaked data could provide valuable information to cybercriminals who use people's personal information to impersonate them or scam them into handing over login credentials, according to Alon Gal, CTO of cybercrime intelligence firm Hudson Rock, who first discovered the entire trough of leaked data online on Saturday.

"A database of that size containing the private information such as phone numbers of a lot of Facebook's users would certainly lead to bad actors taking advantage of the data to perform social engineering attacks [or] hacking attempts," Gal told Insider.

Gal first discovered the leaked data in January when a user in the same hacking forum advertised an automated bot that could provide phone numbers for hundreds of millions of Facebook users in exchange for a price. Motherboard reported on that bot's existence at the time and verified that the data was legitimate.

Now, the entire dataset has been posted on the hacking forum for free, making it widely available to anyone with rudimentary data skills.

—Alon Gal (Under the Breach) (@UnderTheBreach) April 3, 2021

Insider attempted to reach the leaker through messaging app Telegram but did not get a response.

This is not the first time that a huge number of Facebook users' phone numbers have been found exposed online. The vulnerability that was uncovered in 2019 allowed millions of people's phone numbers to be scraped from Facebook's servers in violation of its terms of service. Facebook said that vulnerability was patched in August 2019.

Facebook previously vowed to crack down on mass data-scraping after Cambridge Analytica scraped the data of 80 million users in violation of Facebook's terms of service to target voters with political ads in the 2016 election.

Gal said that, from a security standpoint, there's not much Facebook can do to help users affected by the breach since their data is already out in the open — but he added that Facebook could notify users so they could remain vigilant for possible phishing schemes or fraud using their personal data.


"Individuals signing up to a reputable company like Facebook are trusting them with their data and Facebook [is] supposed to treat the data with utmost respect," Gal said. "Users having their personal information leaked is a huge breach of trust and should be handled accordingly."

 

[ayodhyapati]

533 million Facebook users' phone numbers and personal data have been leaked online

The data includes phone numbers, Facebook IDs, full names, locations, birthdates, bios, and, in some cases, email addresses.

www.businessinsider.com

This is pretty bad. Even I have access to this data. Best to change your passwords, even if you don't have a Facebook account as Facebook makes
"Ghost Profiles" of your activity and information using Like buttons on other websites such as these ones on PDFView attachment 730837





Article:

• The personal data of over 500 million Facebook users has been posted online in a low-level hacking forum.
• The data includes phone numbers, full names, location, email address, and biographical information.
• Security researchers warn that the data could be used by hackers to impersonate people and commit fraud.
• See more stories on Insider's business page.

A user in a low level hacking forum on Saturday published the phone numbers and personal data of hundreds of millions of Facebook users for free online.

The exposed data includes personal information of over 533 million Facebook users from 106 countries, including over 32 million records on users in the US, 11 million on users in the UK, and 6 million on users in India. It includes their phone numbers, Facebook IDs, full names, locations, birthdates, bios, and — in some cases — email addresses.

Insider reviewed a sample of the leaked data and verified several records by matching known Facebook users' phone numbers with the IDs listed in the data set. We also verified records by testing email addresses from the data set in Facebook's password reset feature, which can be used to partially reveal a user's phone number.

A Facebook spokesperson told Insider that the data was scraped due to a vulnerability that the company patched in 2019.


While a couple of years old, the leaked data could provide valuable information to cybercriminals who use people's personal information to impersonate them or scam them into handing over login credentials, according to Alon Gal, CTO of cybercrime intelligence firm Hudson Rock, who first discovered the entire trough of leaked data online on Saturday.

"A database of that size containing the private information such as phone numbers of a lot of Facebook's users would certainly lead to bad actors taking advantage of the data to perform social engineering attacks [or] hacking attempts," Gal told Insider.

Gal first discovered the leaked data in January when a user in the same hacking forum advertised an automated bot that could provide phone numbers for hundreds of millions of Facebook users in exchange for a price. Motherboard reported on that bot's existence at the time and verified that the data was legitimate.

Now, the entire dataset has been posted on the hacking forum for free, making it widely available to anyone with rudimentary data skills.



Insider attempted to reach the leaker through messaging app Telegram but did not get a response.

This is not the first time that a huge number of Facebook users' phone numbers have been found exposed online. The vulnerability that was uncovered in 2019 allowed millions of people's phone numbers to be scraped from Facebook's servers in violation of its terms of service. Facebook said that vulnerability was patched in August 2019.

Facebook previously vowed to crack down on mass data-scraping after Cambridge Analytica scraped the data of 80 million users in violation of Facebook's terms of service to target voters with political ads in the 2016 election.

Gal said that, from a security standpoint, there's not much Facebook can do to help users affected by the breach since their data is already out in the open — but he added that Facebook could notify users so they could remain vigilant for possible phishing schemes or fraud using their personal data.


"Individuals signing up to a reputable company like Facebook are trusting them with their data and Facebook [is] supposed to treat the data with utmost respect," Gal said. "Users having their personal information leaked is a huge breach of trust and should be handled accordingly."

very bad , how they can leak data related to individuals ? they should be sued for damages .

 

[arjunk]

very bad , how they can leak data related to individuals ? they should be sued for damages .

There is no accountability for them in America. However, if someone says they don't want to date LGBT people their entire career is ruined for bigotry.

 

[newb3e]

There is no accountability for them in America. However, if someone says they don't want to date LGBT people their entire career is ruined for bigotry.

these social media platforms have become really strong companies like google facebook twitter can subconsciously tune ones mind! its crazy!

 

[Goritoes]

I think the world should just come together and ban Facebook once and for all.

 

[Bilal9]

It's not like these Google, Facebook and Twitter people don't have money to enforce security.

It's just that their primary interest is in monetizing people's likes and dislikes, not preserving people's personal information. Until say the FCC and European GDPR folks come in and say that Multi-Billion dollar fines will be imposed on these companies for leaking people's personal data (including of course credit card information).

Majority of Facebook users (extroverts of both sexes) don't care about security until their identity gets stolen. Passwords are for losers - right?

People in the subcontinent don't care as they do not have the equivalent of a social security number or any govt. services dependent on it, for that matter.

This is more of an issue in EU and US, and other nations in the West. Where their whole life is digitally encoded.

 

[Ushuaya]

I heard that the personal data of more than 533 million Facebook users appeared in free access on one of the hacker forums on the Internet. As a result of the leak, phone numbers, full names of users, their dates of birth, biographical information, unique identifiers of the social network became available. In some cases, their email addresses are also available. A database of this size containing personal information will certainly lead to attackers using the data for hacking attempts or fraudulent actions using social engineering methods. Therefore, now I always use a fake phone number generator everywhere not to write my phone number so that my data does not leak.

 

[Cheehg]

I don't understand why so many people especially in western countries care very much about the privacy but post everything on Facebook.

 

[SuvarnaTeja]

I don't understand why so many people especially in western countries care very much about the privacy but post everything on Facebook.

Privacy is over rated.

And this is their own data. They are not stealing any data.