Adersh Unni KrishnanIn January of this year’s phone number of nearly six Lakh Indian users reportedly sold on Telegram via a bot caught in another incident involving privacy and user data breaches. The database was originally marketed on the Telegram immediate messaging website, which was first leaked in 2019 at $20 per search. Facebook has then said the flaw causing the leak had been fixed.
In a serious breach of privacy, the personal details of almost 533 million Facebook users from over 100 countries, according to multiple sources, were supposedly leaked online and posted free in low-level hacking forums.
The information gathered includes names, intercourse, occupation, marital status and relationship status, membership date, and users’ place of work.
Massive Data Leak By Facebook
The data leaked, found by Alon Gal, and is complementary to Facebook IDs, telephone numbers, places, e-mail addresses, and other relevant user information. Also, as stated, even Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s personal information seems to be in the leaked database.
Gal first noticed the data breach back in January on a hacker website. Only telegram users could pay for searching the whole database at that time. However, the data is now accessible online according to the news, jeopardizing any customer.
The Indian consumer data was allegedly used in a 500-minute Facebook folder and their phone numbers sold on the app. The telegram leak is also linked to an event that was previously recognized by Facebook late in 2019 and subsequently corrected.
The Bot used the Facebook vulnerability to access each Facebook account in all countries according to a Motherboard survey. The bot of Telegraph was sold at $20 or INR 1,500 for a telephone number or Facebook ID and $5,000 for 10,000 numbers for batches.
When a user is connected to the Facebook account, their Facebook user ID may be used to locate not only fraudulently activate the platform, but other phishing- and hacking attacks related to e-mail and telephone numbers.
Reported at the end of 2019, the vulnerability enabled everyone to see the phone number connected to over 400 MN of Facebook users. At this point, the social media giant said that Facebook had dispersed the data before the platform updates cut the developer from access to the handset.
The company also asserted the server contained about 220 Mn data. It continues to remain to be seen how the recent development would have any direct effect on Facebook’s various court cases and privacy-related issues around the world.
The leaked data contains details of Facebook users from different countries. So, of the 533 million users, 32 million users are from the US, 11 million are from the UK, and 6 million are from India.
If you entered the site or changed your password after the repair, you could be protected from such a huge data leak. However, like most of us seasoned Facebook users, there is a strong risk that the data is out there in the breach.
Now that the information has already leaked on the internet, you can do nothing but be alert to any spam or scam calls.
However, you should review our step-by-step instructions on how to remove your Facebook account if Facebook has been constantly neglecting your privacy. This would eliminate future data breaches on your site from your personal information.
Must Read: More Facebook News.