419 million records from the Facebook database found in the public domain

Facebook, one of the largest IT companies, andpart-time owner of the eponymous social network, the WhatsApp messenger, Instagram, Oculus Rift and a couple of other projects of a lower rank continue to pursue trouble. It would seem that the scandals related to Facebook’s negligent attitude to personal data of users have just subsided, as a new misfortune came: recently a database was found on the network containing more than 419 million records linked to Facebook accounts. Moreover, this database contained a lot of information about users and, judging by the reports, the source of the leak was not Facebook.

Facebook user data leaked to the network. Again

What data from Facebook users leaked to the network?

It’s worth noting right away that if you have an accounton Facebook, registered in the Russian Federation, so far you should not worry. Since according to information received from network security specialist Sanyama Jaina, most of the records relate to residents of the United States, Britain and (suddenly) Vietnam. The databases themselves were discovered on an open server that was not even password protected.

As for the personal data leaked to the network,among them were Facebook identifiers, and in some cases they were associated with usernames, their gender and country of residence, the platform from which users went to Facebook and, worst of all, phone numbers. Sanyam Jain in an interview with TechCrunch also said that he found the phone numbers of some celebrities.

This leaked dataset is obviously notfresh. And, it seems, it has information more than a year ago, said a Facebook spokesman. This information was received before we made improvements to our security system. In addition, the current databases are in perfect order and we have no reports that they have been compromised.

Most recently, Facebook head Mark Zuckerberg said security issues had been resolved.

Also, after some analysis, it became knownthat the database found on the network has a lot of information that is duplicated. Thus, the true number of leaked data is about 2 times less. About 200-210 million records. But that is still too much. And if the data on the gender and age are not particularly dangerous, then the phone numbers are very serious. Even if you believe the representatives of Facebook and take into account the fact that the database is really “not fresh”, people, as a rule, do not change phone numbers very often. And this can "incite" telephone spam to users' smartphones. But this is far from the worst. Knowing the phone number, you can access various services (and not only on Facebook) such as email or even bank accounts. But to access our Telegram channel, leaving personal data is not necessary. So you can safely subscribe!

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In addition, attackers have long been in stockschemes of "divorce" of users based on their personal data. For obvious reasons, we cannot leave a link to the leaked database. But there is a rather interesting point with her: pretty quickly access to the database was closed. But "those who need it" managed to dump all the files. So the information is already walking on the network. As they say, everything that was on the Internet remains on the Internet. Dear readers, be vigilant and think 10 times before posting information about yourself on the world wide web.