By now, you have probably heard of the huge Facebook data breach, in which upwards of 533 million Facebook users from 106 countries had personal data leaked online. Last weekend Facebook users had their data leaked to a hacker forum. Despite including personal data such as phone numbers, full name, birthdate, email addresses, and more, Facebook isn’t notifying those affected.
Facebook hasn’t issued an official statement regarding the situation yet. Liz Bourgeois, who is in charge of response communications at Facebook, stated that “this is old data that was previously reported on in 2019” and that the vulnerability was patched in August 2019, but that didn’t stop a hacker from uploading 20GB of data from 553 million individuals to the Internet.
By now, you have probably heard of the huge Facebook data breach, in which upwards of 533 million Facebook users from 106 countries had personal data leaked online
One well-known site that tracks data breaches is Have I Been Pwned. Just follow the link to the site and put in your email address or phone number. You will find out not only if you’ve been part of the Facebook breach, but also any other breaches in which your data may have been compromised.
Troy Hunt, creator of Have I Been Pwned, was considering whether to include a phone number search, but ultimately decided to add the feature:
Writing your phone number on an unknown website may cause you some problems later on. And in case your number has indeed been part of the leak, beware of spam and SMS messages you might receive.
Some of the steps you can take are to change the passwords of compromised sites, use a password manager so that you can create and track unique passwords for each site, use two-factor authentication for additional security, and stay alert for news of any other breaches.
