The data leak happened on Saturday, April 3
Facebook experienced a major data leak. Source: pexels.com
Data from Facebook users including personal data such as names, phone numbers, and email addresses were leaked. The exposed data obtained from 533 app users from 106 regions were placed in a hacking platform. In fact, even Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s phone number appeared among all those stolen data.
Although the data could be used by hackers in fraud, the data leaked is said to be over a year old. It includes files on 32 million Facebook users in the United States, 11 million from the United Kingdom, and 6 million from India.
However, Facebook has played down the importance of data exposure. The company’s spokesperson revealed in her tweet that the breach was from old data reported in 2019:
This is old data that was previously reported on in 2019. We found and fixed this issue in August 2019. https://t.co/mPCttLkjzE
— Liz Bourgeois (@Liz_Shepherd) April 3, 2021
However, while the issue was fixed in 2019, Alon Gal, an Israeli-based cybercrime and security expert has critiqued the explanation from Facebook. The information obtained could be used for scamming, social engineering, marketing, and hacking, he highlighted.
All 533,000,000 Facebook records were just leaked for free.
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
— Alon Gal (Under the Breach) (@UnderTheBreach) April 3, 2021
We’ve reported that hackers leaked stolen Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine data.
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