Another Massive Data Leak, 267 Million Users Affected: Is This End Of Facebook?

The Facebook stint with data breaches is far from over. The social media goliath has another data breach to deal with. This time, the massive breach has affected as many as 267 million users. The Facebook user ID, phone numbers, names, and other personal data was exposed to an online database. The breach could lead to spamming, phishing, and more.

Facebook Data Breach, Again

Reported by Comparitech, the Facebook data breach was discovered by security researcher Bob Diachenko. The online database was spotted on December 4, but today, December 20, it is unavailable. The database was found on a hacker forum as a downloadable file before it was taken down. The report states that most of the affected users are in the US.

The reason for the data breach could be a fault in Facebook's API or it could also be due to an illegal scraping. If the user has set their profile to public, then scraping is easy to do - even though it is against Facebook's policies.

This isn't the first time Facebook has witnessed massive data breach and privacy mishaps. Most recently, Facebook and Twitter users on Android were affected through a malicious third-party app. A couple of months ago, millions of phone numbers linked with Facebook accounts were exposed in an online database.

How To Stay Safe

Every time there's a Facebook data breach, the user account details, name, IDs, phone numbers, private messages, and more are exposed. Exposure of location is also common. Users should keep unique and strong passwords and ensure to keep changing it regularly. Moreover, passwords shouldn't be repeated among various platforms.

Researcher Diachenko advises users to change their privacy settings to 'Friends' on Facebook to steer clear of data breaches. It is also advised to set 'No' for "Do you want search engines outside of Facebook to link to your profile?" setting. Moreover, users need to be wary of suspicious, unsolicited messages received on the platform.