CALIFORNIA: The personal information of more than 500 million Facebook users was leaked online by a user in a low-level hacking forum.
As per details, the leaked data includes private details such as phone numbers, email addresses, full names of users, locations, birthdays, and bios.
The Facebook data leak has hit more than 533 million Facebook accounts from 106 countries, including records of 32 million in the US, more than 6 million users in India and 11 million in the UK.
Meanwhile, security researchers and experts have warned that the leaked information and data could be used by hackers to impersonate people and commit fraud.
According to Alon Gal, co-founder of Israeli cybercrime intelligence firm Hudson Rock, the record appears to be the same set of Facebook-linked cell numbers that has been circulating in hacker circles since January and whose existence was first reported by tech publication Motherboard.
Alon Gal said on Saturday that he had verified the authenticity of at least some of the data by comparing it against phone numbers of people he knew.
Gal told Reuters that Facebook users should be alert to “social engineering attacks” by people who may have obtained their phone numbers or other private data in the coming months.
However, in a statement, Facebook said that the data was “very old” and related to an issue that it had fixed in August 2019.
