An absolute goldmine for identity thieves was released to the web by a hack into the Facebook database. Business Insider is reporting the personal information from 533 million Facebook users was hacked including: 32+ million records on U.S. with their “phone numbers, Facebook IDs, full names, locations, birthdates, bios, & email addresses.”
Do not be surprised if the data removed ultimately attributes to a particular political and social grouping of users that Facebook identified and categorized. There is a very reasonable suspicion the release of the information could be ideologically targeted.
(Via Business Insider) – A user in a low level hacking forum has published the phone numbers and personal data of hundreds of millions of Facebook users for free online.
The exposed data includes personal information of over 533 million Facebook users from 106 countries, including over 32 million records on users in the US, 11 million on users in the UK, and 6 million on users in India. It includes their phone numbers, Facebook IDs, full names, locations, birthdates, bios, and — in some cases — email addresses.
[…] “A database of that size containing the private information such as phone numbers of a lot of Facebook’s users would certainly lead to bad actors taking advantage of the data to perform social engineering attacks [or] hacking attempts,” Gal told Insider.
Facebook did not immediately respond to multiple requests for comment.
Gal first discovered the leaked data in January when a user in the same hacking forum advertised an automated bot that could provide phone numbers for hundreds of millions of Facebook users in exchange for a price. Motherboard reported on that bot’s existence at the time and verified that the data was legitimate.
Now, the entire dataset has been posted on the hacking forum for free, making it widely available to anyone with rudimentary data skills. (read more)
Suspicious cat remains, well, suspicious…
The cat is on to it.
Facebook actually funds election fraud
But there are people here who still use it and help fb fund more fraud
Not me, 🙂
I Know, right? It’s nice being a non-joiner. If there were a non-joiner’s club, I could be a member – but I wouldn’t.
Unfortunately, due to facebooks omnivourous collection of all data everywhere from anyone, if you just know or email or have any contact with someone who uses facebook than they have a datafile on you as well.
This is quite true but when they meet me face to face I’m certain that they’ll regret it.
Tough Guy, eh?
I’d join a non-joiners club in a heartbeat, then skip every meeting.
“I don’t want to belong to any club that would accept me as one of its members.”
Heh… Groucho nods.
Does that include organized religion?
I only used it to get pictures of my nieces and nephews because their mom was to busy to send them to me.
Very good thing as it was introduced, but as usual the motive was to spy and steal.
As was this PC idea, a wonderful invention when used properly. But one of the
worst when not.
That’s what DARPA had in mind.
Lazy ass mom, right?
Seems like every time I join some club ect. It turns bad, took quite sometime for me to even comment here. So far so good. 😉
Jay, I joined a model railroad club about forty years ago. What I received for my trouble right off the bat was a stack of chance books to peddle. I haven’t been back.
I know of a person that joined the police club so he had access to better quality drugs !
I may consider it for a time, but would most likely procrastinate past their good by in use dates anyways …
#ContemplatingProcrastination
Accidentally on purpose
Was this one of those laptop with huge dada base left in a car or park bench accidents? Seems they up their game since those days?
This was not a “Hack” China was allowed in with the door wide open.
Accidentally SOLD, is more like it..
I’m glad I followed my gut instincts and never joined facebook! Let’s hope this encourages the facebook addicts to quit.
I had many people asking me to join, but I could never agree to their ToS which I actually read.
Tell them if they use fb
They help fb fund election fraud
Oh goody, more spam and phishing mail coming soon.
This was NO accident nor hack. A facebook employee just performing an assigned task.
It matters not if you have a facebook account or not. If an “on-line” associate of yours has a link to you and links their on-line accounts to their facebook accounts, you ARE compromised. That is how facebook and others automatically link stuff to your facebook or similar service accounts.
Even more reason to leave!!!!!!!
If your on-line friends have facebook, your information IS COMPROMISED having a Facebook accout DOES NOT matter if an on-line acquaintance has an account. YOU ARE LINKED.
BIG TECH is a cartel and ALL linked. The US Government is paying them to link.
Facebook and Twitter need to be run out of business. They are dangerous to the Republic.
And this is why my Facebook account does not have my phone number, my primary email address, my real birthdate, my full name, my location, etc… ^_^
When I had a FB account, I did the same. Found the most obscure location in the country with the best podunk name & that became my place of birth. I was one of the oldest users on the planet LOL. Gotta love the “way back machine”.
Back up your FB. Delete every single post, then go through the steps to delete your account.
I’ve never looked back.
Don’t feed the beast.
I simply disappear with anonymity. Generic birthdate, vague location, modified version of my name.
No, I will not delete my account. It is the best/only way I have to communicate with people who are very dear to me, one of the venues where I wage cultural war, and one of my very few links to the outside world when I am stuck inside for all but a couple hours a week.
I don’t do ads, anywhere (except the Treehouse, once they’re implemented.) I have AdBlock and several other privacy extensions. I’m not feeding any beast.
“It is the best/only way I have to communicate with people who are very dear to me”
well said…
Some people seem to forget why Facebook was initially launched…
It was the CIA’s personal data-gathering Life Log Program, wasn’t it?
Yes
https://www.collective-evolution.com/2019/07/01/did-mark-zuckerberg-really-create-facebook/
Now your on the money, also an extension of MKULTRA.
But if you are communicating with people who know you, then how hard would it be for somebody to figure out who you really are?
Well, more difficult than you’d think. I don’t ever put photos of myself or my kids online – and I never have my photos tagged with location when I take them, that’s one of the first features I turn off on every new phone – and my husband doesn’t either. All my friends live states away, so I’m not much talking about local features either.
Clueless about metadata.
Do u buy your internet with cash? Your devices with cash? Do you log onto other emails (cookies slime all over each page searched to connect dots)..
Is your cellphone in the same house as your computer? If so they constantly speak with each other.
They got us. We are all clueless together.
Only way is to feed it poor data, ruin it’s output
Of course not. Do you use cash for everything? Internet? Online services? I doubt it. Facebook does not have anything on me that the rest of the corporations do not (and by extension, the NSA.) I am well aware that all of us are tracked and logged all the time. I protect myself on Facebook as well as I do anywhere else.
You’re on a platform now with a Facebook user… so they’ve probably got you too now. Want to gin up a petition to have me banned from the Treehouse so you don’t have to share a platform with me?
TreeC, about eight years ago, I was due a tax refund from irs. I received a snailmail from them telling me that to prevent fraud, I needed to log onto an online questionnaire to verify who I am. It was a multiple choice; if I got any wrong, I’d have to contact some other department.
They asked me all the towns out of five that I’d lived in; they asked which autos [model and year], also out of five or six, that I had owned; they asked multiple choice stuff about my siblings.
They already know more about you than you can possibly imagine. The .gov already has this stuff; the faceboo “hack” likely is an avenue where this information gets to the “bad guys” without any poo showing on .gov’s claws, cause they’re “public servants”, don’t ‘cha know?
That’s… really odd. I’d have suspected it of being a scam.
Hmmm… sounds to me like you got a phishing letter.
Then you are known. Period.
And yes I purchase a new device for each Operation, per Opera, per person, per purpose. Have over 10
Unless you have had an expert actually try and do it, how can you possibly know for sure?
It us amazing how willing people are to hand their lives over to their captors
Zuckerberg is laughing with his comrades
Why would you support a business that is destroying your kids futures?
Wall street is laughing at how easy it is to subjugate the willing.
Wage cultural war? Lol
Her daughter put her into that position.
Without us all coming together, we are going to force people to make bad choices that kill us all
Facebook is actually funding election fraud now.
Every time she uses facebook, she is supporting their election fraud business.
The corporations feed money into facebook according to viewership and use.
Who’s your internet provider? Why are you supporting a business that’s destroying the country and your kids’ futures?
All families should move close now. Ham radio
It depends on the family WhiteBoard.
We have move farther away from my husbands family on purpose decades ago and we are much better off from this decision.
Believe me we are.
Every time you get on fb
The corporations give them more money
Then facebook funds election fraud like their mail in voting and dropbox initiatives
You are fueling your kids future serfdom
Every month when you pay your internet bill, the corporations use it to lobby against you and spread propaganda. (So much for “cutting the cable.”) They control your information flow. They decide what you see or hear.
What kind of device are you accessing the internet from? An Apple? A Windows? Dell or HP? An Android? Chromebook or Pixel? What’s your operating system?
Newsflash: we’re all funding our own destruction. Until you’ve built your own phone/computer from scratch – and no parts made in China – program your own operating system, and provide your own internet connection, you can cut out the cutesy lecturing.
Comment deleted by Admin…
She doesnt realize that every time she uses fb
The corporations gives them more money
And then fb pays for things like their election fraud initiatives.
These days, if you give false info, often the system rejects it because there is some central database already, and why care? Plenty of institutions have the info already anyway, or do you think the IRS and Social Security employees all really to keep your info safe?
Comment deleted by Admin…
Name-calling is not appropriate here. Please respect treehouse guidelines.
He’s now being moderated…
You would that would be obvious procedure for anyone these days. And using a dead letter email account when order from Amazon etc …
Your device I’d is seeable by this websites owner now I’m sure. It’s common for commenting
same here; provided as little information as possible and still be able to get on the platform.
Guess what? If you’ve ever visited a website that shares to Facebook, they’ve got you too. Guess you better get off the internet altogether.
Not if you properly edit your hosts file.
Actually I’ve got a neat little plugin in my browser that keeps Facebook localized, so they’re not actually cross-tracking me either. I’ve noted the difference from before/after the plugin, when I go in and delete my cookies. I was just making a point.
Why force people to go to the gulag
If theyll go in themselves
Please stop with the derogatory name calling.
Probably an inside job done at the behest of Suckerberg.
I once again am glad I never went on social media. Yahoo email is bad enough. ?
Try Protonmail. It’s free, and (supposedly) fully encrypted in and out. I’ve been using it for the last 3-4 months. Seems ok.
Last I checked it wasn’t free, but someday I need to make that move regardless.
Please stop with calling fellow members “idiot” or “sucker”.
This is about as accidental as Bank of America sending credit card data to the FIB to ensnare ‘insurgents’.
Some of us have been warning the more conservative members of the “Look at me” crowd to GTF off of FB, but nooooo, it was more important to yap endlessly about last night’s dinner and the grandkids’ Zoom classes and all the rest of it. Oh, well. Some folks need a dope slap before they believe anything.
Some of them, well, they have their own truth. Not that it comports with reality and dope slaps aside, it isn’t affected by reality. The only way to win that game is by not playing. Facebook = Lifelog (DARPA) = no privacy.
Big Brother has been watching for years. It’s now easier and there are more avenues to snoop.
For some people Facebook is a means of income for others
Facebook is way to notify upcoming mega rallies.
we might have to speak in code…
Dont support the jailers
There are alternatives
I’m curious why it matters.
I did not realize how much people whine about having their rights removed
Then hand over $$$ to people like zuckerberg
Amazing
I’m sure the Colorado and DC terrorists’ data weren’t ‘lost to the hacker’.
Nor that of the black Muslim terrorist and Farrakhan devotee who killed the cop and has now been erased.
Fakebook must insure data integrity for the faithful.
Oh there are a ton of people that buy stuff using FB apps..So FB has more than just names and some phone numbers.
sorry for off-topic: K, if you are on twitter, please DM me. I’ve forgotten your twitter handle!
–MaryfromMarin
Lynda63986855 GrannieLynda
On Gab I am Kinthenorthwest
Just followed look forward to it.
“Suspicious cat remains, well, suspicious…”
Smart kitty.
I’ve never been on FB.
Never wanted to, never will.
That being said GAB was also hacked and info stolen.
Just be careful out there.
The “hack” could be to take some heat of all the Islamist Terrorist that FB allows to have accounts.
Just some misdirection and Zuck hopes no one is the wiser.
The fool thinks he is Octavius Augustus reincarnated.
With the same haircut.
<smiles>
FB probably sold the info and are now covering their butts.
Well, for what little it is worth, I didn’t put my real birthdate on my Facebook account.
I’m proud that I deleted my FB account months ago and that I have never tweeted in my life.
“A user on a low level hacking forum …”
I wonder if the FBI and other intel agency people know about this user and forum?
Ha!
Always used fake information on fakebook!
My first thought is that by releasing it publicly everyone who uses this material will now be deemed innocent. This material can be used in many ways including the government and the intelligence community who are already known to abuse their powers. But now they can say that this information is all public knowledge meaning they did not get it illegally.
My first thought, as well, Brenrod.
When I joined FB I was suspicious of them requiring my birth date, so I provided a false birth date and refused to identify my location or acknowledge requests for it. Within the last few months, FB because so obnoxious with flagging any and every post I put out (usually a Gateway Pundit post on election fraud) that I sent in a complaint and told their fact checkers to fact check themselves and deactivated my account. I doubt that will help me, though!
Just another example of why sneaker-net is much secure for safeguarding data on electronic systems.
Aside from that, this does not surprise me. Now the information is public and going to be used for any manner of illicit activities, doxing those deplorables among other schemes.
About 533 million users should just get off of Facebook. And just say no to Coke, Delta, MLB. There are plenty of other ways to spend your money.
Agreed.
Don’t go into these cyberwhorehouses, and you won’t catch these diseases.
Why anyone would put their entire personal lives online, trolling for useless ‘likes’, is beyond me.
Gee, no downstream liability there. Of course if you put your personal private information up in a social media trashcan like Fakebook then you’re just asking to have it compromised.
Have Zuckerberg and his election interference become too radioactive?
Is this a Big Tech version of what is going on with Anthony Cuomo?
Is this how Zuckerberg is allowed to step down and go away?
I m not political on Facebook, its away to keep track of birthdays and funerals of friends and family.
Sad that the left is using it to destroy the traditional family.
It was created to destroy that and also to become a monopoly and censor
There are alternatives
Dont feed the beast
Why only 32 million Americans hacked.
Guessing all have something in common, like supporting TRUMP and complaining about the fraud passed off as an election.
You Facebook users actually turned over all this information, and you did it willingly.
You learned the extreme political bias of Facebook years ago, and you kept using Facebook.
You saw the extreme anti-free speech bias of Facebook, and you kept using Facebook.
You saw (or should have) that the true monetizing plan for Facebook, was to mine your personal data and sell it.
You had to see, that without a doubt, Facebook could separate their users into Democrats and Republicans, with a high degree of accuracy and certainty.
You have been sold out, and by calling it a hack, Facebook washes their hands of y0u.
No war needed to take over the country
Citizens will give it up willingly
Everyone freaks out over a leak like this, but doesn’t think twice about NSA, CIA, DIA, or other alphabet soup agencies monitoring every email, tweet, phone call or computer keystroke. Odd.
EXACTLY! I want to say “So what?” about Facebook hacks. What is the personal threat to you and do you really care or are you just outraged that your info gatherer didn’t politely ask your permission?
Any Conservatives have their data hacked?
Didn’t think so.
You can’t call this a hack when the CCP is connected to zucks Chinese born wife. This was allowed to happen probably with the help of alphabet agencies
Truth is the minute you went online you lost your privacy, whether you are on a social network or not. If you have a smartphone (I don’t) you are tracked and traced. I deleted Twitter a while ago too many trolls. I have FB but have very little personal data on there. Fake phone number, birthday. I accepted years ago I have no internet privacy. Welcome to the information age.
Had a high level computer programmer tell me the exact same thing.
My father in law bragged that he never put his personal information out on the internet, till I asked him how he bought his airline tickets.
It’s almost impossible not to have any kind of an online fingerprint.
If you support sites like fb
You support people who are turning the country into a penal colony
They just get more powerful
They will really enjoy Barnabus_Dukes info! My brother and I created it YEARS ago. Nothing but redneck gobbledygook . 😉
So I’m reading it’s about 20% of the users that was “leaked”, did this 20% have a particular political leaning?
That would be a sucker’s bet to take that I imagine.
I don’t believe this is as ominous as it first appears.
Consider how much electronic/online information is already ‘out there’ about all of us.
Search for a piece of information about yourself — name, address, DOB, etc. — and you will be surprised (and perhaps horrified) by what is already there.
Personally, I did not trust Facebook from the beginning — and only signed up to see photos of far-away relatives. As far as Facebook itself is concerned, I was born in 1910.
Except, that initial false information is actually meaningless, as just a few more clicks would undoubtedly bring the entire ‘picture’ together.
In summary, whether or not personal information is intentionally hacked — and then offered up — is only a shortcut.
Unless you have been living in a cave or on top of a mountain somewhere — with absolutely ZERO electronic/internet connections — your information has already been captured.
If you use facebook in any way
You are empowering people intent on taking away every right you have
How so?
The little swipe card you use at the grocery store (for those discounts) adds to the data collection.
It is ALL connected.
They have everything on everybody anyway , I figured this out before the internet , all they have done is
‘Expand Operations’
After reading all the posts here I must say most are wrong . My reasoning is simple for most here have one way or another given in to FEAR, by doing this you are playing right into the hands of the beast itself, the beast eats FEAR for breakfast.
Beauty killed the beast, only UNITY will kill the FEAR !
facebook is behind this “hack”
why?
users and profits have eroded and are likely to continue that trend.
with dozens of nations looking very hard at the third party buyers market for FB data (user data), FB has to offset this risk.
and more to the point, FB would want to eliminate the third party at least partially..just go direct..
the data was hacked..sure…but it will be private holdings (fb investors and shareholders) who will get just another method for exploiting the data…all bypassing the legal barriers.
FB knows the peak already happened..so they go rogue.
in a twist, FB will be asking the fed for some critical.nstional security money… yup… count on it.
then it becomes even closer to manipulating and corrupting the state fully.
the state will be more than willing to climb in bed with FB, secure them with protection regulations, and the current “issues” of regulation will drop off the political map.
FB also gets a valuable leverage too. that stolen data can be manipulated and thus used as both insulation against prior crimes and also manufacturing crimes and suspicions of high power value targets.
they will aim at trump for sure.
but the immediate goal is to send a strong message to congress, where DEMS control house and senate. I would expect this hacked material is going to be used as extortion influence to voting laws reform, gun, and where the 4 trillion dollar “infrastructure” money is directed.
information IS POWER.
FB may have been hacked but few have more interests in using that hacked material than FB.
just a hypothesis/guess
Just to add:
it cannot be overstated just how many other technocrat companies benefit from FB abusing user data, selling it and manipulating “markets”…
most people have a simple idea about what FB is about. This is the front end idea. The user experience.
Behind the front end are enormously powerful and profitable DEALS made to secure access to user data, to target ads to users (very profitable), and also to provide content to FB….
just some of the heavy “customers” of FB: Google, Microsoft, Apple, Samsung, Walmart, Target, COSTCO, Sam’s Club, Lowe’s, HomeDepot, Ebay, Paypal.
one of the biggest customers of FB data is the US government! Massive contracts, some dark, but most quite open to operate FB and a number of it’s “services” to provide a network system for facebook-like experiences for government employees.
So, this hack can be looked at in the same light as the solarwinds hack.
in the same way the credit default crisis can be examined.
too big to fail.
all it took for the fed to stop pursuing anti-trust and user data and first amendment issues with FB, was a massive hack of data.
And just like that, we will hear no more about congress or any investigators at the FED looking at business practices.
watch the stock price for FB. Watch it carefully. It is near an all time “high”. But reports show users growth has diminished significantly worldwide. Major smartphone manufacturers and carriers are not getting the same lucrative deals from FB for embedding FB app into the devices. So that is a big deal.
notice this also:
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/facebook-analytics-is-shuttering-on-june-30/401143/
Facebook points users to the following business tools to use after Analytics is removed:
If marketers can adapt to using a combination of the above tools they may be able to accomplish the same tasks they’re used to getting done in Facebook Analytics.
the last sentence is key.
in the last year plus, facebook has not been very transparent or helpful to many businesses about how to establish a working analytics product. This has placed many UBER BIG companies in a lurch trying to create such alternatives.
the hack could very well be a response to this new development.
why pay FB for the data, is it can be sold to developers and other businesses as they are attempting to create and adapt to the changes that FB has imposed upon them!
my guess remains the same..FB is behind the hack.
Glad I deleted my account 3 months ago and never gave Fakebook access to my phone number.
It’ll be fun to find out if people who “permanently deleted” their Fakebook accounts weren’t actually deleted…
What is it about MZ? He doesn’t appear to be humanoid – some sort of blend between human & machine. Has always freaked me out.
I don’t use, so do not store information, on: Facebook, Twitter, or Amazon. You may want to find a more secure less radical leftist alternative. None of the above works too.
FB was LifeLog before it was FB. LifeLog was a DARPA project. Is there any reason to think FB is not?
From millitary.com on February 4, 2004 —
The Pentagon has pulled the plug on LifeLog, its stunningly ambitious effort to build a database tracking a person’s entire existence.
https://www.military.com/defensetech/2004/02/04/lifelog-dead
From thoughtco.com, but backed up in various other articles —
“On February 4, 2004, Zuckerberg launched a new website called TheFacebook.”
https://www.thoughtco.com/who-invented-facebook-1991791
Give me a break. The controversy about Zuck and the Winklevoss twins certainly smells like misdirection away from DARPA.
It’s not a fault, it’s a feature…..
They found it on Hunter Biden’s laptop!
My guess is it is not a hack but on purpose.
I am perpetually locked out of my fakebook account, for some reason I do not get the text to my phone for the verification code for a password reset, and can not get logged in in order to delete it. In order to get it unlocked they want me to upload a photo my drivers license to their mobile app, which I will NEVER DO. Would like to get rid of that account but I guess it’ll just be a ghost profile.
This guy wants to rule the world but he can’t even keep his own website secure.
Don’t use Facebook, Instagram, Google (masked), Amazon (there are excellent alternatives).
Alas, I can’t find any way not to use YouTube. The alternatives are too limited.
The aim is to bed in learned helplessness….”there is no confidentiality and you should not expect it”.
This might not be a new hack. The Daily Mail at this link gives some very good background information.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9433271/Leaker-says-offering-private-details-500-million-Facebook-users.html
Maybe this is God’s way of punishing people, or at least getting their attention, for using fascist Zuckerberg’s fascist tool called “facebook”.
Not saying it is, but it could be.
Or this is Satan’s way of having Herr Fuuuckerberg and Facebook identify likely conservatives and Republicans and exposing them to cyber crimes and harrassment. through a “hack”.
Another reason why we BOYCOTT Facebook, Twitter, Google, Chi-Com slaver Apple, Coke, Delta, MLB, NBA, NFL, loser college teams that knee against the Republic and all other un-American corporations and the ANTI-AMERICAN DEMOCRAT Party. The CEO’s running these companies are losers, socialist and Marxist sympathizers.
Don’t forget slaver Nike.
I see a lot of ‘it’s the only way I keep in touch…it’s for pictures….they don’t have my personal info…’ What a bunch of garbage and you’re only kidding yourself. I guess we haven’t hit rock bottom yet. Tisk tisk