Over 500m Facebook Users Had Their Data Hacked and Leaked Online

According to reports, personal data of 533 million Facebook users has been posted online, with data including full names, locations, email addresses, phone numbers and biological information available for free.

“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,” Business Insider reported.

“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,” the report continued. “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.”

According to a Facebook spokesperson, the data was scraped due to a vulnerability that was fixed in 2019. The data was previously leaked, and has now been made widely available.

Liz Bourgeois, who works in Facebook’s Communications department, and lists “formerly @TheDemocrats and @SpeakerPelosi” in her Twitter bio, tweeted on Saturday, “This is old data that was previously reported on in 2019. We found and fixed this issue in August 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,” Business Insider added. Read Full Article >