It looks like they abused the old feature to locate user by phone number and just bruteforced all numbers in a country. This feature is no longer available.
533M Facebook users' phone numbers and personal data have been leaked online
441–450 of 524 posts
Re: 533M Facebook users' phone numbers and personal data have been leaked online
#442Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wouldn't call any of them SpongeBob "fans". We did grow up with SpongeBob though and SpongeBob is a common subject for Internet memes, so that might be it.
I wouldn't call any of them SpongeBob "fans". There’s over 70k of them, how can you be so certain?
SpongeBob was originally for adults. But adults who grew up on Nickelodeon cartoons. Kids found it funny but don't always get the jokes because they are adult humor. They had to dumb it down for the kids. Before Netflix kids watched cable TV and Nickelodeon, and made a lot of memes about SpongeBob and the Krusty Crab. Every one of them wanted to work at the Krusty Crab with SpongBob and Squidward.
Re: 533M Facebook users' phone numbers and personal data have been leaked online
#443Looking 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…
Could you please tell me how did you convert it to sqlite? I've got a huge 1 GB txt file that crashes my comp every time I try to search for myself there :( Thank you!
I used to use Borland's Brief to edit large files. But it is commercial. There is a free version in beta here https://sourceforge.net/projects/grief/ Grief. It pages the file in and out of memory to save space.
Re: 533M Facebook users' phone numbers and personal data have been leaked online
#444The root of the problem is not the privacy policy or the system security. The root of the problem is the collection itself. All large businesses, health care providers, and governments maintain databases. Every one of them will eventually be leaked. All it takes is a corruptible trusted insider.
Google has a huge number of activist (and surely some corruptible) employees, and yet the incidents of users data getting out are very close to zero. I think this demonstrates that user data can be managed safely and effectively. Usually the incidents reports on user data leaks show that the company seemed to barely be trying - We need laws that force them (even small companies) to put serious effort into it.
> Google has a huge number of activist (and surely some corruptible) employees, and yet the incidents of users data getting out are very close to zero
Am I reading this wrong, or are you saying that activists would be more likely to leak data? Then I would wonder what kind of activists you have in mind.
Agreed that yes indeed it seems possible to build a security serious company, and that Google is (seems to be) a good example. (Now, there are other things I don't like about Google but I guess that's of topic.)
Re: 533M Facebook users' phone numbers and personal data have been leaked online
#445I 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…
Like really? Don't you have to walk to a bank or show some ID? I live in the EU and I do operate under the assumption that banks take reasonable measures to ensure an account is linked to a legal identity.
No in the Us you can easily open one online just by answering a few questions and giving your SSN. Sometimes they will ask you to upload an ID. But that could also have been leaked.
Re: 533M Facebook users' phone numbers and personal data have been leaked online
#446Earlier quoted context omitted.
Exactly. People who save your details in their Address Book and click the "Sync your Contacts" when an app suggests it, are the loophole in privacy and security. The only way is to have a separate set of email, phone numbers, for those family and friends who doesn't care about privacy and security, that way it is easy to dispose those information later. Beyond that … if we truly want to avoid it … the only course of…
That is exactly how I deal with it. I use a throwaway webmail address and a Google Voice number. No way they're getting my real email or phone number that I use for work and clients.
You're not avoiding having a shadow account created about you though, once I've upload my contact list and you're right there, Jim Wyclif, with your real phone number, and I've also tagged you in a photo we took together last year. And then there are all the other people who have your real phone number and who have been on Facebook, Messgenger, Instagram, or WhatsApp since they saved the number. And then there's even relatives and former classmates and co-workers who've looked up your name and typed in your town, school, and/or former company to find you. When I use Facebook, it still recommends former classmates and acquaintances who I literally looked up once ever. (As a side-note, Snapchat does the same type of things; people I've worked for in the past, as a tutor, are recommended to me on the "Add Friends" page.)
Re: 533M Facebook users' phone numbers and personal data have been leaked online
#447Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you're the fraudster, you're providing the address and phone number.
In which case it surely wouldn't match with credit report databases?
It turns out that signing up for a new bank account is something that people commonly do at the same time as they're moving to a new place and change their address and phone number.
Re: 533M Facebook users' phone numbers and personal data have been leaked online
#448Would 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.
I have WhatsApp and you can deny access to your phonebook. Everything works just fine
As I've seen on WhatsApp on every smartphone I've had: when you download WhatsApp and tap the "New chat" icon in the upper right corner, the app SHOWS YOU a list of everyone from your phone's contact list who has a WhatsApp account. They also show the list when you click "Chat" at the bottom and then "New Group."
Re: 533M Facebook users' phone numbers and personal data have been leaked online
#449https://haveibeenpwned.com/ I've been pwned 33 times. At this point, it's just noise. My passwords are all unique (password manager). Honest question - What should I worry about?
You should work about being a smug cunt.
Posting like this will get you banned on HN, regardless of who or what you're replying to.
Could you please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules? We'd appreciate it.
Re: 533M Facebook users' phone numbers and personal data have been leaked online
#450I 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 problem is completely the opposite. The flaw is the existence of social security numbers. Prohibit them from being used for anything but social security.
Then there is no "your social security number" or "your identity" for someone to open a bank account against. You open a bank account and they give you a bank card and you set an address and phone number. The day you open it, they shouldn't need to know who you are, because it's a new account with $0 in it. After that, the owner of the account is the person with that bank card who can be reached at the address and phone number given when the account was created.
Get rid of centralized identity and there is no centralized identity to steal.