A staggering 533 million Facebook user data has been leaked online in the latest Facebook data breach incident.
Facebook user data breach:
On the 3rd of April, more than half a billion users’ private data was leaked on a hacking forum, as was first reported by Business Insider.
Apparently, the Facebook data breach incident leaked private sensitive data of users that included details such as phone numbers, Facebook user IDs, full names, locations, birth dates, user bios, and in some cases email addresses.
In India, records of around 6 million users were posted online. Apart from this over 32 million and 11 million records were found to be on users in the US and UK, respectively.
Facebook addresses the breach and backtracks on similar history:
Addressing the Facebook data breach, the social media giant stated the particular data that was leaked was the old Facebook user data that was formerly reported in 2019.
Back in mid-2019, Facebook had found itself in hot water due to a similar data breach that leaked data of more than 400 million users.
Facebook had seemingly addressed the issue stating that it was a consequence of its unprotected servers before stricter security measures had been implemented.
“We found and fixed this issue in August 2019” noted a Facebook spokesperson.
Alon Gal, chief technology officer of cybercrime intelligence firm Hudson Rock, detected the data breach on Saturday.
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The leaked data in the data breach was discovered to be made available for free on a hacking forum, thereby rendering the data accessible to basically anyone.
Risking business maneuver:
This incident sheds light on the sheer capabilities of Facebook to collect and hoard the abundance of Facebook user data and its efforts or rather, struggle in efforts to keep the data secure and protected.
Data breaches of this manner jeopardize the basic operating model of Facebook that collects user data and information to promote targeted ads via marketers.
