If you were a Facebook user in 2019, your information may be among the millions of records posted on a website used by hackers.
Cyber-intelligence firm Hudson Rock over the weekend revealed that the personal information of 533 million Facebook accounts had been leaked, including names, phone numbers, Facebook IDs, locations, account creation dates, birthdays, relationship statuses, resumes and, in in some cases, email addresses.
Facebook (FB) said the data is from a previously reported breach in 2019. "We found and fixed this issue in August 2019," Facebook spokesman Andy Stone told CNN. However, for many users, the information they had on their Facebook profile in 2019, such as phone numbers and birthdays, probably has not changed in the last two years. And that means data can still be useful to hackers.
The news of access to personal information is not conclusively good, but it is also not necessarily a cause for panic. The truth is that data breaches, unfortunately, have become quite common for a wide range of online services.
Because information theft involves names and phone numbers, this can lead to an increase in phone calls or text messages (which are already a big problem).
The data can also be used to perform social engineering attacks, such as "phishing". Typically, a social engineering attack involves someone imitating a legitimate person or organization, including a bank, company, or colleague, to steal information such as login credentials, credit card numbers, social security numbers, and other important information.
While this Facebook scandal will not necessarily lead to the rise of scams, the fact that so many different types of user information are available to many hackers can make them look more credible and thus more successful.
It is advisable to change the details and secure your account.
Source: CNN
