A widely quoted report at Business Insider points to a Tweet from Alon Gal, CTO of cybercrime intelligence firm Hudson Rock, uncovering a leak of two year old Facebook data to a "low level hacking forum."
All 533,000,000 Facebook records were just leaked for free.
— Alon Gal (Under the Breach) (@UnderTheBreach) April 3, 2021
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
Business Insider says the data "includes phone numbers, full names, location, email address, and biographical information," and could be used for identity theft or other nefarious purposes.
The leak underscores the danger of being forced to provide 100 points of ID to Facebook or other social media services, as the Australian Federal Government proposes doing.
Business Insider said it was able to verify various accounts of people it knew, but Facebook told Business Insider "that the data was scraped due to a vulnerability that the company patched in 2019."
Full details at Business Insider here, but now that the information is out, even deleting your Facebook account won't stop the information it has already collected about you from leaking.
Naturally, Facebook's response has been slammed by many online, with BGR stating Facebook's response was "awful."
Of course, Facebook has been well known to play fast and loose with user data, with claims it has been on an "apology tour" for the last decade and a half for the various leaks and issues the company has faced.
Business Insider quoted Gal as stating: “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.”
