Personal data of 533 million Facebook users leaked on a hacking forum

The personal information of over 533 million Facebook users leaked online yesterday. This data was made available on a low-level free hacking forum to anyone with basic data skills. The data included full names, Facebook IDs, phone numbers, locations, birth, biographies, and email addresses.

According to a tweet made by Alon Gal co-founder and CTO of Hudson Rock, “All 533,000,000 Facebook records were just leaked for free. This means that if you have a Facebook account, it is extremely likely the phone number used for the account was leaked. I have yet to see Facebook acknowledging this absolute negligence of your data.”

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https://twitter.com/UnderTheBreach/status/1378314424239460352

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Gal also warned that, “Bad actors will certainly use the information for social engineering, scamming, hacking and marketing.”

BusinessInsider 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.

What you should know about the cybersecurity breach at facebook

• This is not the first time that Facebook has suffered a security breach. Earlier this year, there was a report that a cybercriminal forum was selling access to a database of phone numbers belonging to Facebook users, and conveniently letting customers look up those numbers by using an automated Telegram bot.
• This presented a cybersecurity and privacy risk to those whose phone numbers may be exposed and there is really nothing Facebook can do to help users affected by the breach since their data is already out in the open.