Personal Data Of 533 Million Facebook Users Reportedly Made Available Online For Free

Personal information leaked because of an earlier vulnerability on Facebook, Inc FB has reportedly been made freely available online.

What Happened: Business Insider reported that the personal information of 533 million Facebook users has been posted on a "low level hacking forum," without specifying the forum.

News of the information being posted for free came from Alon Gal, co-founder & CTO of cybercrime data business Hudson Rock.

Business Insider said it had seen and verified a sampling of the records in the leaked data by cross-referencing them with the data of known Facebook users.

Business Insider said it even tried to contact the leaker on the Telegram messaging app but did not get a response.

Why It Matters: The data includes information such as phone numbers, full names and birth dates of users from 106 countries, including the U.S., the U.K. and India. 

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Facebook said the data leak resulted from a vulnerability that was fixed in 2019, according to several media reports.

But now it appears the already-stolen data has resurfaced, and it could be used by in hacking and scamming attempts.

Photo from Pixabay.