Facebook has once again failed to secure its users as the personal information of millions across the globe has been leaked online.
It is alleged that around 533 million Facebook users are thought to have been affected by the data breach, with phone numbers, Facebook ID, full name, location, past location, birthdates and personal bios all leaked.
According to Techradar the data is thought to be the same set that was leaked in January 2021 and was available to purchase online.
The leak was first discovered by security researcher Alon Gal, co-founder of security research company Hudson Rock. Gal allegedly verified the details of some users involved in the leak, with the information seemingly valid.
“If you have a Facebook account, the phone number used for the account was likely leaked,” Gal said.
He believed the data could be a couple of years old and could have been extracted using the bug that Facebook said it fixed back in 2019 before being first made available online back in January.
The Business Insider South Africa reported that even though South Africa was not directly listed as an affected country, millions of SA accounts appear to be affected under the designation “Africa”.
The Business Insider has also went to great lengths to review a sample of the leaked data and verified several records by matching known Facebook users’ phone numbers with the ID’s listed in the data set.
They have also allegedly verified records by testing email addresses from the data set in Facebook’s password reset feature, which can be used to partially reveal a user’s phone number.
Meanwhile, Gal has warned users to remain careful of “social engineering attacks” as hackers may try to access their Facebook accounts using the information obtained through this fresh dump of leaked data.
Picture: Cape Town Etc gallery