Recently, on a hacker forum, more than 533 million users’ personal data of the social network giant Facebook were leaked and published.
The personal data of Facebook users that were leaked was in the public domain, and the leaked data of the users were from 106 countries of the world.
According to the reports, the leaked data includes the accounts of:-
- 32 million US residents
- 11 million British residents
- 6 million Indian residents
Data Involved
Alon Gal, the co-founder of the Israeli cybercrime intelligence firm, Hudson Rock, asserted that “A database of this size, containing personal data like the phone numbers of many Facebook users, is likely to lead to a situation in which attackers can use these data to execute social attacks like social engineering to scam, hack, and other frauds.”
The type of data of the users involved and were posted on the forum in this incident are mentioned below:-
- Full names
- Date of birth
- Biographies of users
- Real location
- Mobile numbers
- Email addresses
Earlier in February 2021, it was reported that a database containing more than 370 million Facebook users was published in the public domain. While that database consisted of 108 text files, and each of them contains the data from a particular country.
But, this current leaked database contains a more complete and huge mass of information as compared to the earlier one. As in this database, users from 106 countries were involved, like the US, the UK, India, Afghanistan, Iraq, etc.
Leaked Data Includes Mark Zuckerberg’s Mobile Number
Along with the 533 million personal data of the users of Facebook, the phone number of Facebook’s founder, Mark Zuckerberg, is also leaked and posted in the wild. Here, the incident came to light when a Twitter user, “Walker”, noticed and reported the leaked data of Mark Zuckerberg by tweeting:-
“Regarding the #FacebookLeak, of the 533M people in the leak – the irony is that Mark Zuckerberg is regrettably included in the leak as well.”
But, this data breach faints before the fact of the divulgence of Mark Zuckerberg’s phone number.
