The personal information of over 533 million Facebook users leaked online yesterday. This data was made available on a low-level free hacking forum to anyone with basic data skills. The data included full names, Facebook IDs, phone numbers, locations, birth, biographies, and email addresses.
The exposed data includes personal information of over 533 million Facebook users from 106 countries, including over 32 million records on users in the US, 11 million on users in the UK, and 6 million on users in India. It includes their phone numbers, Facebook IDs, full names, locations, birthdates, bios, and in some cases email addresses
The leaked data could provide valuable information to cybercriminals who use people’s personal information to impersonate them or scam them into handing over login credentials, according to Gal who first discovered the leaked data on Saturday.
In the meantime, Facebook has not responded to multiple requests for comment by Business Insider or Axios or Reuters.
This is not the first time that Facebook has suffered a security breach. Earlier this year, there was a report that a cybercriminal forum was selling access to a database of phone numbers belonging to Facebook users, and conveniently letting customers look up those numbers by using an automated Telegram bot.
