A leaker says they are offering data on in excess of 500 million Facebook users – including phone numbers and other information.
The database appears to be the same set of Facebook-connected phone numbers that has been flowing in programmer circles since January and whose existence was first reported by tech publication Motherboard, according to Alon Gal, co-founder of Israeli cybercrime intelligence firm Hudson Rock.
Reuters was not immediately able to vet the information, which is being offered for a few euros’ worth of digital credit on a well-known site for low-level hackers, but Gal said on Saturday that he had verified the authenticity of at least some of the data by comparing it against phone numbers of people he knew. Other journalists say they have also been able to match known phone numbers to the details in the data dump.
In a statement, Facebook said that the information was “very old” and identified with an issue that it had fixed in August 2019.
An attempt by Reuters to arrive at the leaker over the messaging service Telegram was not promptly successful.
Gal told Reuters that Facebook users should be alert to “social engineering attacks” by people who may have obtained their phone numbers or other private data in the coming months.
