#Facebook data breach full

Once data is exposed, it’s hard to put the genie back in the bottle. This batch of stolen data came up for sale on the dark web again in April, 2020. It’s believed that Facebook API abuse or illegal scraping were involved in the data capture. Then, in March 2020, a second server was discovered that contained data on 42 million more users, bringing the total up to 309 million.īoth servers were associated with the same criminal group, a collection of hackers based in Vietnam. The data included names, phone numbers, and Facebook IDs.

In December 2019, Facebook user data from approximately 267 million accounts was found unprotected on the dark web. December 2019: Hacker Group Captures Data from 300+ Million Facebook Accounts But until Facebook discovered and fixed the issue, thousands of developers could still see data on inactive users if those inactive users were Facebook friends with someone who was an active user. They promptly fixed the issue, and on July 1 st, 2020, Facebook made the issue public via a blog post.įollowing the Cambridge Analytica scandal in 2018, Facebook had implemented a new policy that would only allow developers to access customer data within 90 days of using the developer’s app. In June 2020, Facebook engineers discovered an issue that enabled third-party developers to access personal data on users they should not have had access to. June 2020: Facebook Accidentally Shares User Data with Third-Party Developers You can check to see if your data may have been breached at. In October 2021, the Irish Data Protection Commission proposed a fine of up to 36 million euros for these data privacy violations. In an internal memo, Facebook dismissed the incident as a data scraping issue, unavoidable for social media platforms: “We expect more scraping incidents and think it’s important to both frame this as a broad industry issue and normalise the fact that this activity happens regularly.”Īs a result of this and other incidents, Facebook has come under pressure from the European Union for violating its General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). But they decided against notifying the 530 million users whose personal data had been scraped. Most of the scraped data was tied to users’ phone numbers, and only 2.5 million email addresses were obtained.įacebook fixed the vulnerability by September 2019. In violation of Facebook’s terms of service, hackers scraped users’ profile data by exploiting this tool.

The leaked data appears to have been scraped from Facebook in 2019, when a group of hackers exploited a vulnerability in Facebook’s contact importer.īack then, users could readily find people on Facebook by entering phone numbers into a contact importer.

In April 2021, a trove of data pertaining to over 530 million Facebook users was publicly posted in an online hacking forum. April 2021: Personal Data for Over 530 Million Facebook Users Leaks in Online Forum

#Facebook data breach full

Below, we’ll get into the full history of Facebook’s data breaches and privacy violations, starting with the most recent. This information, which included names, phone numbers, and more, was originally scraped using Facebook’s contact importer in 2019.Īs far as we can tell, there have been no known Facebook breaches so far in 2022. The most recent Facebook data breach happened in April 2021, when personal data pertaining to 533 million Facebook users was made public on an online forum.