Data of 1.5B Facebook users on sale at Hacker Forum
Amid global outage of Facebook along with its associated
platforms, the data of its over 1.5 Billion users are now being sold in the
dark web.
A report said the data are being sold on a Hacker Forum.
Sputnik News reported that in late September, an
announcement was posted on a hacking forum that claimed to have the name,
email, phone number, location, gender, and user ID of 1.5 billion Facebook users.
“One prospective buyer has allegedly been quoted at $5,000
per 1 million Facebook accounts.
“This would value the entire set of Facebook user data at
$7.5 million.
“In a subsequent post, the seller alleges to represent a
large company that works to scrape Facebook for data”.
The seller adds that the company has been in operation for
at least four years and has over 18,000 clients.
In one post, the seller claims “We are legit company.”
Web Scraping is a process that uses bots to extract publically
available content and data from websites. If the seller is to be believed, it
means no accounts have been compromised.
However, the seller utilizing a hacking forum to garner
clients does little to ease fears that the 1.5 billion Facebook users, the company
allegedly has data on, won’t suffer as a result.
Dubious internet marketers and cybercriminals can now bid on
these peoples’ personal data and with it as they see fit.
The news of 1.5 billion Facebook users’ personal data being
for sale comes at a particularly troubling time.
It has been confirmed that Facebook and Instagram have been
withdrawn from the global routing system of Domain Name System (DNS).
While at the same time, Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp’s
domain names have been listed for sale.
Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp went offline Monday
evening, Nigerian time.
The Facebook Inc said it was working to restore the
platforms.
“We’re aware that some people are having trouble accessing
our apps and products.
“We’re working to get things back to normal as quickly as
possible, and we apologize for any inconvenience”, Facebook said on Twitter.
Instagram also issued an apology:
“Instagram and friends are having a little bit of a hard
time right now, and you may be having issues using them. Bear with us, we’re on
it!”
WhatsApp couched its apology in similar words like Facebook:
“We’re aware that some people are experiencing issues with
WhatsApp at the moment. We’re working to get things back to normal and will send
an update here as soon as possible.
“Thanks for your patience!’.
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