Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

A database of Facebook users’ phone numbers found online

techcrunch.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 177 posts

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

#81

Post by w-ll »

compiler-guy wrote: post #10
reaperducer wrote: post #3

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.

How many people change their phone numbers more than once a decade? How many people change their facebook accounts ever? The age of this data may be "old" by whatever definition Facebook is using, but it is still of great interest to identity thieves and ne'er-do-wells.

Relevant XKCD https://xkcd.com/1129/

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

#82

Post by nano81 »

sapski wrote: post #54
brlewis wrote: post #24

If I never associated a phone number with my account am I safe, or does it also include phone numbers from contacts lists people let Facebook copy?

the latter, see https://gizmodo.com/facebook-is-giving-advertisers-access-to...

Not true, you could only search for accounts using phone numbers people had entered themselves

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

#84

Post by amatecha »

So... any way I can see if my number was in this database?

Pretty funny. Years ago I very-begrudgingly verified my phone# on my FB account as my employer had me working on a FB integration... I knew I should have upheld my principles and not used my personal account.

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

#85

Post by userbinator »

amatecha wrote: post #84

So... any way I can see if my number was in this database? Pretty funny. Years ago I very-begrudgingly verified my phone# on my FB account as my employer had me working on a FB integration... I knew I should have upheld my principles and not used my personal account.

My general rule is that the only personal resource I will use in a software job is my brain.

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

#86

Post by userbinator »

bifrost wrote: post #18
pedrocx486 wrote: post #2

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.

Google only really does http/https, finding mongodb requires scanning for 27019 and then pointing a client at it. I believe Shodan does this.

It also indexes ftp, but that may unfortunately be coming to an end[1]. Ironically enough, Google's mission statement is still "to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful", which if taken to its logical conclusion would mean such humorously delightful things as scanning for mongos and indexing their contents too...

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20721609

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

#87

Post by oriettaxx »

jefftk wrote: post #69
discordance wrote: post #66

If this had European users, will they get slugged with a 4% of their revenue fine under GDPR?

It sounds like this was scraped before the GDPR went into effect.

in https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/fb-3-2.jpg I see "update 2019-8-28", updated from where?

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

#88

Post by Yhippa »

Tade0 wrote: post #50
paws wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you've ever given the service your number, you should consider your real identity linked to it. I have a feeling it's worse than that. (I haven't rigorously perused the ToS, if I'm wrong please lmk.) Let's say your friend John has an iPhone and saves your name and # in their contacts. One day John installs the Facebook app & opens it. John is not technical and when the app requests permissions he taps 'Allow'. A…

Would rather not share the details here, but I know of one instance of a person having been found on Facebook via her phone number even though she never provided it - just one imprudent person who has your number associated with your real full name is enough for this to happen.

This is despicable.

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

#89

Post by mayankkaizen »

52-6F-62 wrote: post #56
compiler-guy wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many people change their phone numbers more than once a decade? How many people change their facebook accounts ever? The age of this data may be "old" by whatever definition Facebook is using, but it is still of great interest to identity thieves and ne'er-do-wells.

Yep. As far as I’m accustomed most people do whatever they can to maintain their phone numbers even across services. So much so that it’s law in Canada a provider can’t lock in your number and must let you take it with you to another provider.

This is the case in India as well. You can keep your number and still change the network provider. People tend to keep the same number.

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

#90

Post by pretendscholar »

raisedbyninjas wrote: post #30

Heads up: T-mobile will allow you to take over an account if you can guess one of the most recent phone numbers that the target account has called.

So you could just call and leave a reasonable sounding voicemail compelling them to call back?
Post reply on HN