Leaker Offers 500 Million Facebook Users’ Private Details

Washington: More than 500 million Facebook Inc users’ information — phone numbers and other data — are being offered virtually for free, according to a leaker.

Going by the co-founder of Israeli cybercrime intelligence firm Hudson Rock, Alon Gal, the database appears to be the same set of Facebook-linked telephone numbers that has been in circulation in hacker circles since January and whose existence was first reported by tech publication Motherboard.

According to news agency Reuters, it was not immediately able to get the information, which is being offered for a few euros’ worth of digital credit on a well-known site for low-level hackers.

However, Gal said that he had verified the authenticity of at least some of the data by comparing it against phone numbers of people he knew. According to other journalists, they have also been able to match known phone numbers to the details in the data dump.

As per Facebook, the data was “very old” and related to an issue that it had fixed in August 2019.

Gal told the agency 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 upcoming months.

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