Facebook data of over 533 million users have been reportedly leaked online on a hacker’s forum. The horrifying part is that the said data has been made openly available for free.
The revelation comes from a news report that the Facebook data breach involves information of users from 106 countries around the world and over 6 million users just from India. The leaked details include the user’s name, phone number, email address, location, birth date, gender, relationship status, and bio.
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The report also cites Alon Gal, co-founder, cybercrime intelligence firm, Hudson Rock, who found the entire event first and later tweeted his findings. He also said that the newly posted data set is the same which was sighted in January 2021 but this time it is available for free. To check the reliability of the data, the source verified a sample set and discovered them right.
However, Facebook denies the breach saying that the data is old and the company has already fixed the issue back in August 2019. Even if Facebook is to be believed, the leak still has the potential to harm millions of users via ransomware, scamming, marketing, or various cyber attacks.
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Alan Gal later said that the social media giant cannot do much in retrieving the leaked data but suggest that users should be alerted against possible phishing attacks in the future. It is also advised to change the Facebook password as a preventive measure. You may visit haveibeenpwned.com to check if your account is affected by the said breach. If yours is, change the password right away. You may also enable two-factor authentication using apps like Authy for enhanced online data security.
In the past couple of years, Facebook had faced various rounds of questioning from the US Congress Committee over its failure in handling and securing users’ data and privacy. This new incident is bound to garner the ire of the social media watchdogs and users alike.
