Washington: A leaker claims to be giving away information on more than 500 million Facebook Inc users for free, including phone numbers and other personal information.
On Saturday, Alon Gal, co-founder of Israeli cybercrime intelligence company Hudson Rock, said the database appears to be the same collection of Facebook-linked phone numbers that has been circulating in hacker circles since January and was first published by tech publication Motherboard.
The information, which is being sold for a few euros in digital credit on a well-known platform for low-level hackers, was not immediately checked by Reuters, but Gal said he had verified the validity of at least some of the data by comparing it to phone numbers of people he knew.
Other journalists claim to have been able to fit known phone numbers to the data dump’s specifics as well.
Reuters’ attempt to contact the leaker via the Telegram messaging service was unsuccessful. Facebook did not respond to requests for comment.
According to a Motherboard report from earlier this year, Facebook said the leaked data seemed to be the result of a bug that the company had fixed in August 2019.
According to Reuters, Facebook users should be on the lookout for “social engineering attacks” in the coming months from people who may have obtained their phone numbers or other personal information.
Business Insider was the first to write on the new leak.
