Facebook data on more than 500 million accounts found on hacker website

[SheltieLover]

https://www.localmemphis.com/mobile/article/news/nation-world/facebook-data-hacker-website/507-8ff0d2ea-db5a-499b-beb7-934bc25b9b55

The leaked data reportedly includes phone numbers, Facebook IDs, full names, locations, birthdates, and email addresses.

NEW YORK — Details from 533 million Facebook users have been found available on a website for hackers. The information appears to be several years old, but it is another example of the vast amount of information collected by Facebook and other social media sites, and the limits to how secure that information is.

The availability of the data set was first reported by Business Insider. According to that publication, it has information from 106 countries including phone numbers, Facebook IDs, full names, locations, birthdates, and email addresses.

Facebook has been grappling with data security issues for years. In 2018, the social media giant disabled a feature that allowed users to search for one another via phone number following revelations that the political firm Cambridge Analytica had accessed information on up to 87 million Facebook users without their knowledge or consent.

More at link.

[Binkie The Clown]

1. Why bother. Facebook data on 500 million accounts found on facebook servers already.

People post their stuff there for anyone to look at. Who needs hackers?

[SheltieLover]

2. Agreed

I've never created a FB account.

[Hugh_Lebowski]

3. Phone number and email are not shared with 'anyone'

The whole thing is a security nightmare, but it's not as bad as you're suggesting.

Seems that someone leveraged a vulnerability where people could be 'searched for' by phone number, although phone number was not technically 'exposed'. So they wrote code to just generate every possible phone number, and see who came back. That vulnerability is apparently patched.

There are also (now) a lot of privacy settings, and everything defaults (or is supposed to) to either not shared, or shared only with friends, depending on the data point. But it was not always that way.

[Binkie The Clown]

5. I connect with family via facebook, but I've never given my phone number, nor would I.

I have a throw-away Yahoo email address I use for such stuff, so that's no loss either. With just a little bit of common sense you can protect yourself. Nothing about me that's available to facebook would be of any use whatsoever to anyone.

[EYESORE 9001]

4. But Facebook is free to use!

We should all be smooching Zuckerberg’s pasty rump for graciously providing such a wonderful service to us - for free! Buncha ingrates!