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More than 533 million Facebook users have had their phone numbers, full names, locations, email addresses, and other biographical information leaked online.
The leak was discovered last week by Alon Gal, Chief Technology Officer of a cybercrime intelligence firm Hudson Rock, after the data was published in a low-level hacking forum, Business Insider reports.
Gal first discovered the initial data hack in January when a user in the forum advertised a bot that would provide the information of the Facebook users for a fee. However, after last week’s leak, the information is now widely and freely available.
Business Insider and Motherboard have both verified the data in the leak. A spokesperson for Facebook told Business Insider the data was years old and was accessed due to a system vulnerability that was fixed in 2019.
Gal tweeted that the leak affected users in 106 countries — including more than 32 million users in the United States — and said that the data gathered could be used by cybercriminals to impersonate or scam users.
“A database of that size containing the private information such as phone numbers of a lot of Facebook’s users would certainly lead to bad actors taking advantage of the data to perform social-engineering attacks [or] hacking attempts,” Gal told Business Insider.
Gal says that Facebook, which has long been plagued with data privacy issues, could have alerted users affected by the breach so that they were aware of the fact that their data was available for use by cybercriminals for phishing schemes or fraud. Other than that, he says there was little else Facebook could do given the fact that the data was already in the public.
“Individuals signing up to a reputable company like Facebook are trusting them with their data, and Facebook [is] supposed to treat the data with utmost respect. Users having their personal information leaked is a huge breach of trust and should be handled accordingly,” he told Business Insider.
This data breach is one of many that has occurred in recent years. In 2020, there were more than 1,000 data breaches and more than 150 million records exposed as a result. A data breach can expose confidential and sensitive information to hackers looking to use the information for nefarious purposes.
Just this February, Facebook paid out $650 million to users in the settlement of a privacy lawsuit, after users alleged the company used photo face-tagging and other biometric data without their permission. Nearly 1.6 million Facebook users in Illinois who submitted claims for the class action lawsuit settlement will be affected.
Lawyers are currently investigating recent data breaches nationwide and the impact that they’ve had on Americans. If you were affected by a data breach, you might be eligible to join or file a class action lawsuit. Share your experience in the comments below.
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54 thoughts onMore Than 500 Million Facebook Users’ Phone Numbers, Personal Information Leaked
I just got hacked from a Vietnamese man supposedly and also got put through the nonsense endless cycle of nowhere on my facebook account. Their chat reps are useless and don’t listen when you try to tell them that you tried all recovery steps and it just keeps sending verification codes to the hacker. I have lost 20years+ of photos easily of family and friends and deceased loved ones that I can never get back and now have to hope to god they wont be able to hack my bank and card info etc…
Over and over I get locked out of my Facebook. Since they are connected my Instagram has been taken over as well. Facebook should be responsible for what is going on. Shouldn’t they be able to block these hackers and seem like it’s the right thing to do but they allow users to be hacked over and over. This is frustrating and infuriating and I’m tired of distress it’s cost me. So please add me thank you…
Please add me. Have had dat stolen from this hack.
I’ve been hacked and banned for post I haven’t posted, everytime I log into Facebook my phone rings with spam calls, I’ve been blocked then unblocked for disputing post I was blocked over, but cant dispute it this time ,no option, I have a few pages I use for business and a group with over 14k members,
Please add me to this class action lawsuit because my account was hacked and it’s an endless loop where I cannot get my Facebook account again due to the hacker getting into my account and changing all of the recovery information
Please add me to this class action. My Facebook account was stolen and all the associated emails changed.
Also there is no phone support for customer service the recording outright say it when you call and also no data breach info was announced or any notifications issued regarding April 2021 breach.
I received notification from the Facebook “Security” team that someone in California had accessed my account and changed my password. FB sent the verification code to my phone (2AM I did not respond), allowed the password change, allowed the hacker to change my email address, and my phone number. This sends you into an endless loop of nonsense where Facebook keeps sending verification codes to the hacked email address when you try to reset the password to get back into your own account. They respond to nothing- I have filed numerous reports and will file them daily until the day I die. From my research, there is a zero success rate on anyone retrieving their personal information when this happens. I have lost messages and photos from my 30 year old niece who died suddenly and tragically. The responsibility lies fully with Facebook and it’s vast incompetence and pretense at privacy and security. I am furious at how easily they allowed the hackers to take over my personal property, but how impossible they have made it for me to regain what is mine. Please help.
This happened to me also, Kathy. Did you ever get any kind of input from FB?
This was a similar situation for me. I was hacked on July 19th and only found out when I checked my email today. There was a verification code sent around 2:30 am central time on the 19th, I received another email that someone was trying to get into my account, and a third one saying my information was changed/updated. I’ve been in an endless look because when I try to call customer service there is no person to talk to for customer service and when trying to get into my account I’ve got a loop where the hacker’s email address is the recovery address. they give an option of a closed email address I had when I originally made the account that I cannot use and even when I try to get through and tell them what email address to contact me there is no email sent where I want to fix this issue. I can’t get in, I have no way to get into my account because of the loop, and at this point I don’t know what to do to get back my account.
I’ve also had a huge increase in spam calls no matter how many I block.
Add me please
I’ve been getting MASSIVELY INNUMERABLE, “SPAM” calls. This has continued despite my use of a call monitoring app, and the fact that I read through my call history at least 2 times a week and manually block any calls labeled as, “spam, or potential spam.”
Please let me know if I should join this suit.
Please add me someone hacked my information on Facebook so I had to freeze my credit with the 3 bureau’s and file a complaint with the FTC. I keep an eye on my bank accounts