Over 500m Facebook Users' Data Posted On A Hacking Website
Over 533 million accounts from 106 countries that contain phone numbers, full names, locations, email addresses and other sensitive information have been found posted publicly in a hacking forum. The data leak involving personal details of hundreds of millions of Facebook users is being reviewed by Ireland's Data Protection Commission (DPC). The database is believed to contain a mix of Facebook profile names, phone numbers, locations and other facts about more than 530 million people.
Facebook says the data is "old", from a previously-reported leak in 2019, but the Irish DPC said it will work with Facebook, to make sure that is the case. Ireland's regulator is critical to such investigations, as Facebook's European headquarters is in Dublin, making it an important regulator for the EU.
The most recent data dump appears to contain the entire compromised database from the previous leak, which Facebook said it found and fixed more than a year and a half ago.There are records for more than 32 million accounts in the United States, 11 million in the United Kingdom, and 6 million in India. Threat intelligence expert Alon Gal has pointed that the way the data was sorted and posted on the hacking site this week makes it far more accessible for criminals to exploit.
Speaking to CNN Rachel Tobac, the CEO of security training firm SocialProof Security said "These are the pieces of data cyber criminals spend time searching for to perform social engineering attacks - but now they're all in one place and easily accessible in this leak, which makes social engineering quicker and easier."
If you want to check your phone number against the leaked Facebook database, you can try using a tool created by the website The News Each Day, in which you input your phone number to find out whether it’s part of the breach. Alternatively, from 7th April people can use the well known Have I Been Pwned online tool to check if their numbers or emails were compromised.
Whether or not your details show up using the search tool to find out that your data has been compromised, some of the recommended steps to take include:
- Change the passwords of compromised sites,
- Use a password manager so that you can create and track unique passwords for each site.
- Set up two-factor authentication (2FA) in any online service that offers it, to access your account or change your details.
Facebook has previously said it would crack down on mass data-scraping after Cambridge Analytica used over 80 million of Facebook user’s data, claimed to be in violation of Facebook's terms of service, to target voters with political ads in the 2016 election. Following this most recent episode of Facebook's careless exposure of user confidentiality, it remains to be seen what regulatory action, in Ireland or anywhere else, will result.
TechRadar: Gizmodo: Business Insider: The Verge: Techcrunch: TheNewsEachDay:
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