533 Million Facebook User's Private Data Leaked, 6 Million Are Indian Users
An Israeli security researcher has confirmed that Facebook data of 533 million users, including names, email address, phone numbers, birthdays, relationship status, and more, has been leaked and posted online by hackers.
It's like deja-vu all over again, Facebook has been hit with another private user data breach affecting over 500 million.
Even if the modus operandi is slightly different from the Cambridge Analytica scandal, that Facebook -- the largest social media platform in the world -- can't secure its users' data despite repeated breaches is scary.
Reuters // Mark Zuckerberg Facebook CEO
Facebook user data breach: What happened?
Israeli security researcher Alon Gal, in a tweet last night, announced how Facebook data of over 500 million users which was originally leaked in 2019 had now been posted on a public hacker forum with sensitive details of users.
ALSO READ: How Facebook Betrayed Its User's Privacy & Mark Zuckerberg Was Forced To Say Sorry To The World
Usually, hackers posting such data dumps of online users sell it on the Dark Web, but that wasn't the case for this Facebook user database -- it was uploaded and accessible to anyone for completely free.
All 533,000,000 Facebook records were just leaked for free.
¡ª Alon Gal (Under the Breach) (@UnderTheBreach) April 3, 2021
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. https://t.co/ysGCPZm5U3 pic.twitter.com/nM0Fu4GDY8
The 533 million Facebook users whose data has been leaked contains sensitive information like name, email address, birthdays, relationship status, location, profile bios, and more have been compromised and are now visible to anyone who gets their hands on this Facebook data dump.
According to Business Insider, which broke the Facebook data breach story, the 533 million Facebook user's data is from 106 countries, out of which 6 million Facebook users are from India.
ALSO READ: Facebook Confirms Data Of 5.6 Lakh Indians Leaked, What Will The Indian Government Do Next?
In his tweet, Alon Gal outraged that he was, "yet to see Facebook acknowledging this absolute negligence of your data," in his Twitter post. So what did Facebook have to say in response?
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg (Image: Reuters)
Facebook reassured users that this is old news. "This is old data that was previously reported on in 2019," a Facebook company spokesperson reportedly told AFP. "We found and fixed this issue in August 2019."
How to check if your Facebook data is breached
A Twitter user has posted a link to the alleged Facebook user data dump online, which we can't independently verify at the moment. The link contains country-wise download options to check text files to search your name against, and take safety precautions.
Twitter
Apparently some of the 533 million Facebook users' data appeared to be current and some of the leaked phone numbers might still be linked to current Facebook accounts, according to the original Business Insider report.
