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A database of Facebook users’ phone numbers found online

techcrunch.com

21–30 of 177 posts

Re: A database of Facebook users’ phone numbers found online

#21
post #12

Kinda curious how you never find those dumps by a normal search on Google, basically you have no way to know if your data is there if you don't know where to look. I don't use Facebook but I always suspected my data is there due to friends having me in their contacts and using their apps.

Security researchers use search engines like Shodan to find these databases, not Google.

Is protocol if you find these things a security researcher not to share the link? I read about these leaks a lot and am always interested in viewing them but never can find them. I assume the links are shared with people carefully because a small number of people will use them maliciously.

Re: A database of Facebook users’ phone numbers found online

#22
post #19

Does anyone know where to obtain this dump? I would like to know if I am compromised.

You can check with "Have I Been Pwned" URL -> https://haveibeenpwned.com/

This appears to be for emails and passwords, neither of which are reported to exist in this dump.

Re: A database of Facebook users’ phone numbers found online

#23

Facebook: "This dataset is old and appears to have information obtained before we made changes last year to remove people’s ability to find others using their phone numbers." Not that "old." Some of those "update" dates are just a few days ago.

That just means the database was updated a few days ago, not that the data is new.

Re: A database of Facebook users’ phone numbers found online

#25
Heads up: when Facebook asks you to give them your phone number to "prevent you getting locked out of your account", they really just want it so they can identify your other profiles in datasets they've bought/own (e.g. WhatsApp). If you've ever given the service your number, you should consider your real identity linked to it.

Re: A database of Facebook users’ phone numbers found online

#26
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can check with "Have I Been Pwned" URL -> https://haveibeenpwned.com/

This appears to be for emails and passwords, neither of which are reported to exist in this dump.

For now. Let's throw some money their way to make search by phone number happen? I have donated just last week and I will do that again next month.

Re: A database of Facebook users’ phone numbers found online

#27

Does anyone know where to obtain this dump? I would like to know if I am compromised.

The database has been taken down:

> The database was originally found by security researcher Sanyam Jain, who said that he was able to locate phone numbers associated with several celebrities. It's not clear who owned the database nor where it originated from, but it was taken offline after TechCrunch contacted the web host. There is no word on why the data was scraped from Facebook or what it was used for.

https://www.macrumors.com/2019/09/04/facebook-phone-number-l...

Re: A database of Facebook users’ phone numbers found online

#28

Kinda curious how you never find those dumps by a normal search on Google, basically you have no way to know if your data is there if you don't know where to look. I don't use Facebook but I always suspected my data is there due to friends having me in their contacts and using their apps.

You are likely in this database if you added your phone number to your Facebook account. There was a point where if you just typed a phone number into facebook it'd return the person who associated their account with that number.

Even worse. You are likely in this database if even a single one of your contacts uploaded their contacts to Facebook.

The probability of your phone number not being uploaded to Facebook is basically 0.

Re: A database of Facebook users’ phone numbers found online

#29
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can check with "Have I Been Pwned" URL -> https://haveibeenpwned.com/

This appears to be for emails and passwords, neither of which are reported to exist in this dump.

It was still reported to HIBP, its probably a worthwhile search.
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