April 5, 2021
The information of 533 million Facebook users from 106 countries, including names, dates of birth and phone numbers, was reportedly published on a website where it was available to anyone. The data was first discovered in January by Alon Gal, CTO of cybercrime intelligence firm Hudson Rock. Despite being a few years old, the records could provide valuable information to identity thieves and other scammers. Gal tweeted: “Bad actors will certainly use the information for social engineering, scamming, hacking and marketing”
In response to the information revealed, Facebook spokeswoman Liz Bourgeois tweeted that the data came from an old leak. She stated, “this Is old data that was previously reported on in 2019. We found and fixed this issue in August 2019.” This is not the first time this has happened. In 2019, a security researcher discovered a trove of data that anyone could access online, containing more than 267 million Facebook users phone numbers, names, and user credentials.
For more information see the original article on CNET.
