I’m still trying to wrap my head around how – and more importantly why – this blew up this big, especially considering it was made very clear multiple times this had nothing to do with the outage.
Honestly expected this to be read by maximum 100 people. This story was also posted about 12 hours before the outage, we had no idea this would happen. Then started getting comments and messages alleging that clearly the site was ordered to change the story and was censored. I ended up modifying that too – unsure if it made a difference though. People apparently don’t read past the headline. I kept editing and re-editing the article for hours yesterday trying to make it clear it’s unrelated to the outage and avoid any confusion. Kept getting comments and emails non-stop, most completely misunderstanding and misrepresenting what all of this was about. The seller claims to represent a group of web scrapers in operation for at least four years, alleging that they’ve had over 18,000 clients. Samples presented on the forum show that the data seems authentic.Ĭross-checking them with known Facebook database leaks resulted in no matches, implying that at first glance, the sample data provided is unique and not a duplicate or re-sell of a previously known data breach or scraping. The seller hasn’t yet responded to these accusations.Īll we know at this moment is that the multiple samples provided to forum users appeared to be real. Update, late 4 October: After this news was initially published, a forum user and prospective buyer claimed they paid the seller but haven’t received anything in return. Update, 5 October: The forum seller denies the scam accusations and claims is willing to cooperate with forum administrators to prove the authenticity of the sold data. One prospective buyer claims to have been quoted $5,000 for the data of 1 million Facebook user accounts.Īccording to the forum poster, the data provided contains the following personal information of Facebook users: The data is currently up for sale on the respective forum platform, with potential buyers having the opportunity to purchase all the data at once or in smaller quantities. In late September 2021, a user of a known hacker forum posted an announcement claiming to possess the personal data of more than 1.5 billion Facebook users. Claims are willing to cooperate with forum administrators to prove the authenticity of the data Some prospective buyers claim the seller scammed them, and no data was delivered after payment was made.Data can be utilized for phishing and account takeover attacks.Personal data obtained through web scraping.Data contains users’: name, email, phone number, location, gender, and user ID.Data scrapers sell sensitive personal data on 1.5 billion Facebook users.It is seemingly unrelated to an earlier 2021 Facebook data dump, where 500 million users were affected. Several media outlets and Twitter users misinterpret this to have resulted due to a hack or data breach, which is not the case.
Several websites and Twitter accounts incorrectly attribute the 4 October Facebook outage to this alleged data leak.įurther Clarification: It’s alleged that the data was obtained by scraping publicly available data shared by users. Important Clarification: This is completely unrelated to the global Facebook outage experienced on 4 October 2021. Yesterday, several forum posters accused the seller of not delivering the promised data after payment. The seller commented they are willing to cooperate with the forum administrators to prove the data’s authenticity.
#Facebook photo privacy hack update
Update – 5 October: The forum seller has today responded and denied the scam accusations, continuing to claim that the data is real. Joe Osborne, a Facebook spokesman, commented to Newsweek, “We’re investigating this claim and have sent a takedown request to the forum that’s advertising the alleged data.” It is possible the thread was taken down due to a request by Facebook: The forum poster and alleged seller, however, were not banned (usually what happens when scam allegations turn out to be true). Update – 6 October: The thread advertising the claimed data scrape has disappeared from the hacker forum. If authentic, this may constitute one of the biggest and most important Facebook data dumps. The private and personal information of over 1.5 billion Facebook users are allegedly being sold on a popular hacking-related forum, potentially enabling cybercriminals and unscrupulous advertisers to target Internet users globally.
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