We are told that the information is dated – but it is another example of the gargantuan amount of information collected by Facebook and other social media sites and the limits to how secure that information is.
The availability of the data set was first reported by Business Insider. According to that publication, it contains information from 106 countries including phone numbers, Facebook IDs, full names, locations, birthdates and email addresses.
Security researchers warn that the data could be used by hackers to impersonate people and commit fraud.
In fact, Facebook have been grappling with data security issues for years.
In 2018, the social media giant disabled a feature that allowed users to search for one another via phone numbers, following revelations that the political firm Cambridge Analytica had accessed information on up to 87 million users without their knowledge or consent.
In December 2019, Kiev-based Bob Diachenko, a Ukrainian security researcher reported finding a database with the names, phone numbers and unique user IDs of more than 267 million Facebook users – nearly all US-based – on the open Internet.
It is unclear if the current data dump is related to this database.
Facebook said the leak was old and stemmed from a problem that had been fixed in 2019. Supposedly.
Individuals signing up to Facebook are trusting them with their data and Facebook are expected to treat the data with utmost respect. When users have their personal information leaked, that represents a huge breach of trust.
And then, their questionable privacy policies is another cause for concern. Facebook have many tricks to follow their users around, including trackers secretly built into websites or geo-locators that determine from which place the site was accessed.
They also collect data from people online even if they don’t have a Facebook account. And there’s no way to avoid it.
Certainly, Facebook need to be “fixed”. Like it or not, this calls for government intervention.
That's why although I still maintain a Facebook account, I'm not active; more an infrequent user.
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