Kozminski Techblog

One of the biggest IT companies, Facebook, and part-time owner of WhatsApp messenger, Instagram, Oculus Rift and a few other lower-ranking ventures continue chasing trouble. It would seem that scandals related to Facebook’s negligent attitude to personal data of users have just subsided, as a new misfortune came: recently a database was found on the network containing more than 419 million records linked to Facebook accounts. In fact, this server contained a lot of user information, and the source of the leak was not Facebook, according to the articles.

According to information received from network security specialist Sanyama Jaina, most of the leaked records relate to residents of the United States, Britain and Vietnam. The databases themselves were discovered on an open server that was not even password protected.

As for the personal data leaked to the network, among them were Facebook identifiers, and in some cases they were associated with user names, their gender and country of residence, the platform from which users accessed Facebook and, worst of all, phone numbers. Sanyam Jain in an interview with TechCrunch also said that he found the phone numbers of some celebrities.

Furthermore, after some research, it became clear that a lot of information was duplicated in the database contained on the network. So the true number of information leaked is about twice as high. Approximately 200-210 million files. But that’s too many somehow. And if the data on the gender and age are not particularly dangerous, then the phone numbers are very serious.Even if you believe Facebook representatives and consider the fact that the database is really “not new,” people don’t change phone numbers very often as a rule. And this may “incite” spam on the phone to smartphones for users. That’s far from the worst, though. You can connect various services (and not just on Facebook) like email or even bank accounts if you know the phone number.

Furthermore,cyber criminals have long stored “divorce” client schemes based on their personal information. We can’t leave a link to the leaked database for obvious reasons. But with her there’s a rather interesting point: access to the server was closed pretty quickly.

But “those who need it” managed to dump all the files. So the information is already walking on the network. As they say, everything that was on the Internet remains on the Internet. Dear readers, be vigilant and think 10 times before posting information about yourself on the world wide web.

references:

https://consent.yahoo.com/collectConsent?brandType=nonEu&.done=https%3A%2F%2Ftechcrunch.com%2F2019%2F09%2F04%2Ffacebook-phone-numbers-exposed%2F%3Fguccounter%3D1%26guce_referrer_us%3DaHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8%26guce_referrer_cs%3DDI44C5qMy_JKhmnEvUm0oA&sessionId=3_cc-session_12132d12-5402-458b-9182-214628108635&lang=&inline=false

https://hi-news.ru/internet/419-millionov-zapisej-iz-bazy-dannyx-facebook-obnaruzheny-v-svobodnom-dostupe.html

https://www.forbes.com/sites/daveywinder/2019/09/05/facebook-security-snafu-exposes-419-million-user-phone-numbers/