Reshab AgarwalA recent massive data leak has been making the headlines. Reportedly data of 235 million Instagram, TikTok and Youtube users have been leaked due to improper storage methods of data by companies.
Nowadays, such data leaks are getting more prevalent than ever. If anyone is on Social Media, they should be concerned about their privacy.
How did the leak happen?
The company Social Data that sells user data legally to marketing companies is apparently the culprit of the situation here. They didn’t integrate any form of security in the social media data they had on users. And, unfortunately, some hackers found out about the mess and dumped the data on the dark web.
Image source: Forbes
The leaked data had all kinds of information about the users: personal information, username, statistics of the account and a lot of other data. The data has over 195 million Instagram users, and around 35 million Tiktok users and the remaining data was from Youtube.
The API platform “Deep Social” which was banned in 2018 by Facebook and Instagram was also linked back to the data leak. The social media giants claimed that the platform is fraudulently scrapping user profiles.
Is the situation handled?
Data or privacy of an individual is a crucial thing. Companies are ready to pay huge sums of money for getting the personalised data of users. So, they can show them ads and thus make money in return. If the massive data leak that happened had any data of any big celeb or influencer, then that data in the wrong hands could be disastrous.
At present, the chief technology officer of social data addressed the issue of the leak has been. Any backdoor to the data has been closed off. The company, however, declined to give any explanation regarding the links to Deep Social.
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