Facebook Leak Exposes 267 Million Users' Names, Phone Numbers on Dark Web

A massive data leak from Facebook has exposed the names, personal IDs, and phone numbers of 267 million users most of them American on the dark web, according to reports.

The IDs, phone numbers and full names of 267 million users, most of which reside in the US, were discovered on an unsecured database on the dark web.

Although it is not yet clear how the sensitive information was exposed, experts speculate the database was compiled through an illegal process called scraping where automated bots copy public information from Facebook profiles.

Access to the database has since been removed, however, the records were available to anyone online for two weeks before the leak was discovered.

In a statement to theDaily Mail, a Facebook representative tried to reassure the public that the leak occurred before new security measures had been put in place.

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Author: Libertarianblue

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Libertarianblue has recently written 9 articles on similar topics including :
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  2. "The New York Timeshas grudgingly acknowledged the success of right-wing and conservative media on Facebook, worrying that it might indicate a looming Trump victory in November. In Particular, theTimesnotes that Breitbart News posts have been shared 4 million times in the past 30 days, "roughly three times as many as posts from the official pages of every Democratic member of the U.S". (August 28, 2020)
  3. "Immediately following the November 2020 Election,Facebook suppressed what it considers hyperpartisan news pages, including Breitbart News, while promoting what it considers authoritative news pages such as CNN,according to theNew York Times". (November 24, 2020)
  4. "Google frequently passes the personal data of "far-right" users to American counterterrorism authorities, according to leaked documents reported inthe Guardian". (August 18, 2020)
  5. "Facebook fact-checker "Lead Stories" took the social network's system of "fact-checking" to farcical levels earlier this week when it "fact-checked" a critique of itself by the Federalist's Molly Hemingway". (December 9, 2020)
  6. "Apple is threatening to ban social media platform Parler from its app store unless it cracks down on constitutionally protected speech that Apple doesn't approve of, a move that would effectively exclude the app from all Apple smartphones". (January 9, 2021)
  7. "Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry has written a letter to Mark Zuckerberg, blasting the Facebook CEO and his platform for censoring medical discussion around coronavirus, in particular the censoring of a viral Breitbart News video of a press conference with frontline doctors and a member of Congress discussing responses to the virus". (August 4, 2020)
  8. "U.S. Sen. Roger Wicker (R-MS), ranking member of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, introduced a bill aimed at curbing tech censorship called the PRO-SPEECH Act last week". (June 15, 2021)
  9. "Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ) and Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI) have introduced a bipartisan bill that would strip legal immunities from tech companies that censor users without their consent". (December 10, 2020)
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