There were many reports over the weekend about the scandal where over 533 million Facebook users had their names, IDs, emails, phone numbers, and other personal details posted on an online forum.
Facebook data leak
ZDnet was among those who reported the huge incident, and they noted that the whole argument that the data came from 2019 was not strong enough since not a lot of people change their numbers. Security firm Hudson Rock's CEO Alon Gal tweeted regarding the incident in January saying the database "came to the fore" especially when a Telegram user had made a bot that would allow users to query the whole database for a simple fee.
Catalin Climpanu of The Report had also reported that the database was actually available in 106 different country-wise packages. While the files are now publicly available, users will still need to purchase forum credits to download them.
Checking if you have been compromised
The personal data leak is another alarming news for everyone that uses Facebook since it might be hard to check whose personal data is included. There is a way, provided by TheNextWeb, to check and see if your Facebook account has been compromised and if the data has been leaked and accessed by others.
How to check if a Facebook account is compromised:
1. Go to haveibeenpwned.com on either your desktop or the phone.
2. Type in the email address that you want to check.
3. For those that have a compromised email, they will be getting a warning to change the password and also enable the two-factor authentication. Compromised accounts can also scroll down the page in order to see all of the other breaches that might have also included credentials that are tied to the email entered.
The main founder of the website is now also considering loading all of the leaked phone numbers in the database. However, this is still subjected to changes and has not been confirmed to happen. The article by TheNextWeb notes that they will be giving an update if ever this story should develop.
Facebook data came from the 2019 breach
It is also reportedly better to change the password as the very first step. The same website that checks if an email has been compromised can also check if a password has been compromised. The article by TheNextWeb notes that people should be using password managers to provide safer security for their accounts.
Facebook also told The Record that this particular data dump first originated from its previous 2019 breach. Although the issue was fixed in August of that year, it is still now considered compromised. Now that the whole data is made public, anyone could easily obtain it for just a few bucks and even target millions of different people for doxing or spamming.
Related Article: Hackers Steal 81,000 Facebook Accounts, Selling Them for as Low as 10 Cents Each
This article is owned by Tech Times
Written by Urian Buenconsejo
