Live data from Hacker News

533M Facebook users' phone numbers and personal data have been leaked online

businessinsider.com

281–290 of 524 posts

Re: 533M Facebook users' phone numbers and personal data have been leaked online

#281

I don’t have FB or or WhatsApp but my Insta account (using a separate email address and no personal details) keeps recommending my therapist to me. How are we still ok with this shit? The sooner we get rid of the cancer that FB is, the better. I didn’t share my contact book with FB apps either. It was probably her—a person in her 70s, not necessarily experienced with tech. The main reason this company exists, or that…

You do know how this happened right? Wifi SSIDs with similar strengths reveal if people are in the same area, then just correlate timestamps and viola! I wouldn't throw the elder person under the bus on this one, the tactics are sophisticated, and honestly, just a precursor to what will happen with AR. To give a bit more of how it's implemented (at least how I would propose it in iOS), Insta/FB/Whats queries availabl…

Are apps allowed to do that on iOS? I can’t think of any good reason besides for a wifi diagnostic app.

Re: 533M Facebook users' phone numbers and personal data have been leaked online

#282
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Is there a trustworthy phone number version of https://haveibeenpwned.com ?" An "exact" google search excluding adjacent phone numbers seems to work well for my numbers, and culls a lot (not all) of the autogen pages. So if your number was 212-555-1239, search Google with these strings: "(212)555-1239" -1240 -1238 "212-555-1239" -1240 -1238

Dear god, fastpeoplesearch.com is a horribly obnoxious treasure trove of information.

Just submitted a removal request for myself, a flow full of dark patterns (in fact the Remove button didn't even show up until I disabled my Pi-Hole). Remains to be seen whether all I did was make the data more valuable by confirming my email address. The page recommends signing up at BrandYourself to prevent various other data brokers from showing the same data. How is this not extortion?

Re: 533M Facebook users' phone numbers and personal data have been leaked online

#283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also @badjeans should give you all passwords for all email accounts, and all encryption keys. Because you know, what does it matter, right?

you're confusing security, privacy, and personal details

Please elaborate. If security is not a measurement to uphold and defend the right to privacy, then what is it?

Re: 533M Facebook users' phone numbers and personal data have been leaked online

#284

Looking at the leak others have pointed to, there are a surprising number of people working in a particular imaginary company: sqlite> select company, count(*) as c from usa where length(company) > 0 group by company order by c desc limit 10; company c ---------------------------------------- ---------- Self-Employed 459119 Facebook 181013 Retired 71210 The Krusty Krab 61550 Hollister Co. 42304 U.S. Army 39682 Stay-a…

Can you link me to where you found the data?

Re: 533M Facebook users' phone numbers and personal data have been leaked online

#285
post #284

Looking at the leak others have pointed to, there are a surprising number of people working in a particular imaginary company: sqlite> select company, count(*) as c from usa where length(company) > 0 group by company order by c desc limit 10; company c ---------------------------------------- ---------- Self-Employed 459119 Facebook 181013 Retired 71210 The Krusty Krab 61550 Hollister Co. 42304 U.S. Army 39682 Stay-a…

Can you link me to where you found the data?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26682774

Re: 533M Facebook users' phone numbers and personal data have been leaked online

#286

Would like to know if non Facebook users are included because Facebook has non Facebook user's phone numbers due to the fact that Whatsapp uploads the entire phonebook to Whatsapp. That means Facebook is likely to know your phone number although you don't use Facebook or Whatsapp.

It's sick that they are allowed to get away with this. It's basically a botnet stealing information.

The difference between malware and "legitimate" software is whether there's a "legitimate" company behind it and whether that company has a "legitimate" interest in the information. Sad but that's how it is. Just like how governments give themselves the right to crack computer security and surveil everyone but throw citizens in jail if they do the same thing.

Re: 533M Facebook users' phone numbers and personal data have been leaked online

#287

I mean, at this point I think everyone should just accept that at the very least their name, age, address(es), email(s), phone number(s) and screen name(s) have been fully leaked if you have ever had any kind of online presence. Not saying that's right or good, but at this point it's just a fact. So if that's the case, I think we should move beyond really even trying to think of this info as private or a marker of id…

The scary thing is how much ones phone number (a somewhat ephemeral thing) is actually bound to your IDENTITY.

Considering your phone number is more and more being used in 2FA ... if you were to ever change your number and someone else got it, this would pose a serious security risk if you failed to change over ALL of your internet accounts 2FA to the new number.

Re: 533M Facebook users' phone numbers and personal data have been leaked online

#288
post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not much to see? Not noteworthy? Where could I, or any Internet user, trivially download these details on 533M Facebook users prior to this dump? If nothing else, it seems extremely noteworthy that someone was not only able to obtain the data through scraping or some attack, but has shared with the world.

> Where could I, or any Internet user, trivially download these details on 533M Facebook users prior to this dump? On Facebook. Literally. You can scrape any public profile info. It's against ToS, but it's not illegal (some caveats apply, see the hiQ Labs v. LinkedIn case for more info). The only noteworthy thing is the phone number vuln. Except that's been known since 2019, so it's certainly not news.

There's a difference between programming a scraper capable of scraping 500 million records, running it and storing the results without getting caught by Facebook and downloading a file.

Re: 533M Facebook users' phone numbers and personal data have been leaked online

#289

Would like to know if non Facebook users are included because Facebook has non Facebook user's phone numbers due to the fact that Whatsapp uploads the entire phonebook to Whatsapp. That means Facebook is likely to know your phone number although you don't use Facebook or Whatsapp.

It goes so much further than this and it is absolutely frighting. The following sketched situations applies if you don't use Facebook at ALL.

99+% of every single person you meet has either FB, IG or WA installed on their phones and shares their phonebooks with them (assuming you live in [insert western country here]). There is also a very big chance at least some have your full name and address in their phonebook. Facebook not only knows who you are, but also who you are in contact with, when you meet new people and who they are. They also collect phone and text records with their apps so they also know the frequency that you have contact with them and they can even read the content of text messages (most people these permissions to the apps because it will automatically verify the associated phone number). Add all the location data, ssid/mac address collection and countless of other datapoints to it and they can draw out your entire life even when you don't use anything from facebook. There is no escape.

Re: 533M Facebook users' phone numbers and personal data have been leaked online

#290
post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where did you get the data leak, I want to check too.

https://t.me/freedomf0x/12553 I haven't checked the content myself, but this tg channel is usually legit

Thanks. I'm just getting a "Please open Telegram to view this post from @freedomf0x" message. Any way to access this without signing up for Telegram? The irony of giving my personal info to another 3rd party just to check if my personal info was leaked by a different party is too much...
Post reply on HN