Facebook was surrounded by scandals and data breaches last year. This trend continued in 2019 with data of 49 million Instagram users and 419 million Facebook users being exposed in databases online. And now that the year is about to end there is still some room left for one last Facebook data breach. This time around personal data of 267 million Facebook users is on the line.
According to a report by Comparitech and security researcher Bob Diachenko, personal data consisting of user IDs, phone numbers and names of 267,140,436 Facebook users was left exposed on a database online. This database could be accessed by anyone on the web without a password or any form of authentication and hence, it could be used for SMS spams and phishing attacks.
On knowing about the data leak, Diachenko contacted the internet service provider so that the acesses to the IP address of the database could be removed from the servers. However, the database was exposed online for almost two weeks before the ISP revoked access to the database. What's more? The data of 267 million Facebook users, apart from being available on the database was also posted on a hacker forum for anyone to download.
Explaining the reason that could have led to the formation of a massive database as this one, Diachenko said that the hackers could have exploited a security hole in Facebook's API. The researcher also said that there is a possibility that this data could have been stolen without using Facebook APIs. There is a possibility that hackers could have gathered this data from "publicly visible profile pages".
Facebook in response to the latest leak said that it was looking into the matter. "We are looking into this issue, but believe this is likely information obtained before changes we made in the past few years to better protect people's information," the company said in a statement to the US based media channels.
Given how easily your data can be extracted from a public profile, it is advisable that you opt for slightly secure privacy settings. In case you have a public profile, here is what you need to do:
-- Open Facebook app and tap on the hamburger icon on the bottom right corner (iOS).
-- Scroll down and tap on Settings and Privacy option. Then tap on Privacy Shortcuts.
-- Tap on See More Privacy Settings option.
-- Set all the fields under Your Activity, How People Can Find and Contact You sub sections to either "Friends" or "Only Me". And you are good to go!
Gloss