These days almost every person in the world is a Facebook user and is under a big misconception that their personal data is safe with the platform. In the latest privacy glitch around 267 million user’s data leaked online.
According to Security researchers these millions of Facebook user IDs, phone numbers, as well as names, were exposed on the web to hackers. The database that contained all the personal details of the users were left open for almost two weeks. Now the users are being urged to update their contact details after this security breach.
The privacy breach was revealed by Bob Diachenko who is a security researcher along with Comparitech. According to the security researcher, the discovery of the data is a result of an illegal scraping operation or Facebook API abuse by criminals in Vietnam.
Bob Diachenko said that the US users are most likely to be at risk of the latest data leak or users who have not set their profiles to private are. “A database this big is likely to be used for phishing and spam, particularly via SMS. Facebook users should be on the lookout for suspicious text messages. Even if the sender knows your name or some basic information about you, be skeptical of any unsolicited messages,” Diachenko said.
However, they are not sure how the personal information of the Facebook users was stolen but Diachenko immediately notified internet service provider that manages the IP address of the server so that the data could be removed.
As most of the affected users were from the US, their unique Facebook ID, phone number, full name and timestamp were leaked too. The security researcher doubts that possibly the user’s data might be stolen from Facebook’s developer API.
The report also said, “Facebook’s API is used by app developers to add social context to their applications by accessing users’ profiles, friends list, groups, photos, and event data. Phone numbers were available to third-party developers prior to 2018. Facebook’s API could also have a security hole that would allow criminals to access user IDs and phone numbers even after access was restricted.”
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