A massive personal data leak, reported in January, is once again wreaking havoc. According to a recent report, the data of 553 million Facebook users was uploaded for free by a user on a low-level hacking forum. Users from at least 100 countries are included. In Europe, the leak affected around 11 million accounts.
The published data includes phone numbers, Facebook IDs, full names, locations, dates of birth, biographies and, in some cases, email addresses. This is not the first time that Facebook has disclosed data of its users online. In 2020, Mark Zuckerberg’s company confirmed that thousands of developers were able to gain access to inactive user data, but this could arguably be the worst leak it has ever been involved in.
Facebook endangers the privacy of its users
The leaks were discovered by Alon Gal, chief technology officer at cybercrime intelligence firm Hudson Rock. Gal discovered the leaked data in January when a user on the same hacking forum announced an automated Telegram robot who could provide phone numbers to hundreds of millions of Facebook users for a price. The motherboard reported the existence of this bot at the time and verified that the data was legitimate.
“A database of this size containing private information, such as the phone numbers of many Facebook users, would certainly lead malicious actors to take advantage of the data to carry out social engineering attacks. [o] hacking attempts ”.
Gal said that from a security perspective, There was little Facebook could do to help users affected by the breach, since your data is already visible, but added that Facebook could educate users so they can stay alert to consequences such as possible theft, schemes or fraud using your data.
“People who sign up with a reputable company like Facebook entrust their data to them and Facebook is supposed to treat the data with the utmost respect… The leakage of users’ personal information is a huge breach of trust and should be addressed in result”.
Although many times Facebook has committed to redouble the security of its platformIt is always an unpaid debt that affects from time to time the millions of users of the social network.
