Facebook Left 419 Million Facebook Users’ Phone Numbers Lying Around

Over 400 million phone numbers linked to Facebook users’ accounts have reportedly been leaked.

The numbers were recently found on an online server that was not protected, according to TechCrunch.

Facebook has already come out to report that users haven’t had their accounts compromised, and that the number of phone numbers exposed is about half of what TechCrunch reported. The server the passwords were stored on was reported to have been left without even the most minimal security. The server was left open and was not protected by a password or any other security checks. According to TechCrunch, 133 million of the 419 million records found on the server were connected to American users.

The exposed phone numbers were discovered by a security researcher who saw the information sitting in plaintext, meaning it wasn’t at all encrypted. It also appears as though this information was gathered by a third party, who left it exposed to the internet. After the web host was contacted, the database containing users’ phone numbers was taken offline. Facebook, for its part, has explained that this issue doesn’t represent a threat to the privacy of any user’s data. “This dataset is old and appears to have information obtained before we made changes last year to remove people’s ability to find others using their phone numbers,” a Facebook spokesperson told Business Insider.

Written by  
5 years ago
Article Tags:
· · ·