According to online sources, the data of 419 million Facebook users was discovered on the Internet. All information was stored in several databases, which were hosted on an unprotected server. This means that anyone could access this information. Later, the databases were deleted from the server, but it remains unclear how they could have become publicly available.
The unsecured server contained data from 133 million Facebook users in the US, 18 million user records from the UK, and more than 50 million user records from Vietnam. Each entry contained a unique Facebook user ID and the phone number associated with the account. It is also known that some of the posts included usernames, gender and location data.
Security researcher and GDI Foundation member Sanyam Jain was the first to discover Facebook user data. A Facebook spokesperson says users' phone numbers were taken from public user accounts before privacy settings were changed last year. In his opinion, the discovered data is outdated because a function that is not currently available was used to collect it. It was also said that Facebook experts did not find any evidence of hacking of user accounts.
Let us remember that not long ago in the USA investigation of another incident related to confidential data of Facebook users. As a result of the investigation, the US Federal Trade Commission fined Facebook Inc. for $5 billion.
Source: 3dnews.ru