Information of 49 million Instagram influencers and celebrities exposed, database traced back to firm in Mumbai

Personal information of millions of Instagram influencers and celebrities has been exposed online in a data breach. The breach was reportedly done from a database of a marketing company based in Mumbai.

According to TechCrunch, private information of over 49 million influencers and celebrities have leaked online. The report states that the database was hosted on an Amazon Web Services (AWS) and did not have a password, leaving it vulnerable to public exposure. The database contained information like bio, location, contact number, email ids, Instagram account details of the celebrities. The easily-accessible database was found by a security researcher, who traced back the database to a social media marketing company called Chtrbox.

Chtrbox, in its defence, stated that limited data of a few influencers were left exposed for three days. The company claimed that the database only had the information that was publicly made available by the influencers on their respective domains, rejecting the claim of any personal or sensitive information exposed, reported The Economic Times.

"We would also like to affirm that no personal data has been sourced through unethical means by Chtrbox. Our database is for internal research use only, we have never sold individual data or our database, and we have never purchased hacked-data resulting from social media platform breaches. Our use of our database is limited to help our team connect with the right influencers to support influencers to monetise their online presence, and help brands create great content,” a spokesperson from the company told ET. However, TechCrunch claimed that it found several high-profile influencers in the exposed database.

Facebook stated that it is investigating the matter and ‘looking into the issue to understand if the data described – including email and phone numbers – was from Instagram or from other sources’. The social media giant is also inquiring with Chtrbox to understand where the data came from and how was it made publicly available.