Facebook: 267 mn users’ name & phone number found on a hacker forum
Facebook hacked! Facebook has accepted that it is investigating the case of a database leak of names and phone numbers of more than 267 million users. An online hacker, who belonged to a crime group, made the database available for download last week.
A Facebook spokesperson told AFP, “We are looking into this issue, but we believe this is likely information obtained before changes we made in the past few years to better protect people’s information.”
Security researcher Bob Diachenko identified the database that has the names, user IDs and phone numbers of Facebook users. The database disappeared by Thursday after the discovery was reported. At a time when Facebook is trying to rebuild trust and alleviate concerns over privacy, this leak comes as a big revelation.
Cambridge Analytica, a British consultancy that is in the middle of a massive scandal involving Facebook data leak, has already Facebook users on how it has handled their personal information.
The investigation launched in March 2018 has revealed how the political consulting firm was involved in deceptive practices to leak users’ information for voter profiling and manipulation.
According to FTC, the British firm worked on the 2016 presidential campaign of Donald Trump and deceived the Facebook users by telling them that they would not download names or any personal information.
It was later revealed that Cambridge Analytica managed to create psychological profiles with the help of the data of millions of Facebook users.
An investigation by Facebook itself had revealed that the data of 87 million users in the USA and elsewhere were compromised by the firm. Earlier this year, Facebook has paid a record $5 billion penalty as a settlement fee with the regulator over the mishandling of users’ private data.
This year has not been nice to Facebook and was involved in a plethora of controversies. Let us know what do you feel about the recent Facebook hack.
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