Facebook Won¡¯t Notify 533 Million Users Of Data Leak, Here's How To Check

Facebook has announced that it doesn¡¯t intend to notify the 533 million users whose phone numbers and personal data have leaked online for free, Reuters reported.

ALSO READ: 533 Million Facebook User's Private Data Leaked, 6 Million Are Indian Users

Reuters

The social media giant cited two main reasons for its decision to keep people in the void. One, that it wasn¡¯t confident who all to notify; and second, that the data was already publicly available and those affected won¡¯t be able to do anything about it.

Facebook database was ¡®scraped¡¯ in 2019

Business Insider reported that more than half a million Facebook users¡¯ accounts from 106 countries, including over 6 million on users in India, were leaked on a low-level hacking forum.

Since then, the large trough of leaked data--including birthdays, locations, full names, phone numbers and email addresses in some cases--has been floating on the internet.

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On Tuesday, Facebook said in a blog post that they ¡°believe the data in question was scraped from people¡¯s Facebook profiles by malicious actors¡± using the contact importer prior to September 2019--a vulnerability that it has since fixed.

An attempt to sweep it under the rug?

However, BuzzFeed reporter Ryan Mac pointed out that Facebook¡¯s explanation doesn¡¯t do justice to several lawsuits filed against controversial surveillance company Clearview AI for scraping photos from Instagram and Facebook.

Over the last year, I have asked Facebook more than a dozen times if it will take legal action against Clearview AI for scraping what is likely millions of photos from Instagram and Facebook. No lawsuits have been filed and FB has said nothing on record.https://t.co/htkKCD5bT0

¡ª Ryan Mac? (@RMac18) April 7, 2021

Even as the data is a couple of years old, it still presents a cybersecurity and privacy risk to those whose personal data may be exposed. Hackers may use that information to impersonate them or scam them into handing over login credentials.

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And instead of apologising for its failure to protect user¡¯s privacy, Facebook is looking to shape this hack as merely a breach of its terms and conditions, just like it did with the 2018 Cambridge Analytica Scandal.

In both cases, btw, it wasn¡¯t technically a ¡°hack¡± because the data was easily accessed by anyone who wanted it. Is that better?

¡ª Sarah Frier (@sarahfrier) April 7, 2021

David Gilbert in Motherboard notes that the blog post also fails to mention when and how many time the vulnerability was exploited.

They also claim to have 'found' the issue in 2019 - which is a blatant lie. I reported the issue to them in 2017 - they said "we might tweak rate limits in the future" and blamed users for not understanding their kafkaesque privacy settings.https://t.co/0xLpXvbonw pic.twitter.com/57yHrmYViJ

¡ª Inti De Ceukelaire (@intidc) April 6, 2021

How to check if your FB account was hacked

Okay folks, so Facebook isn¡¯t going to tell you if you¡¯re one of the 533 million people whose data was leaked online. But you can use the popular third-party website Have I Been Pwned to search your email or phone number in the entire leaked database. Bonus: it also tells you if your personal details have been compromised in previous data breaches as well.

There¡¯s also another website that caters specifically to the Indian audience. Users just need to log in their phone number to check if they were affected by the breach.

You might have heard about a data leak from Facebook. The good folks @payatulabs have created a website for *India* based users to check if their data was leaked. @antriksh_s @iam_anandv @nullcon https://t.co/aGhZXaSHcK

¡ª Saikat Datta (@saikatd) April 7, 2021