In a tweet on Monday 20th April 2020, Cyble, a security research team, revealed that 267 million Facebook users’ identities were sold for 500 Euros.
Cyble’s Twitter profile says that it is a group that is doing the following:
“Providing real-time visibility to OSINT, darkweb and enabling organisations to gain visibility to 3rd-party cyber threats.”
Thus, its warning about the Facebook identities on the dark web stopped many in their tracks. Cyble had posted on their Twitter page:
#Exclusive & #Breaking – 267 Million @Facebook Identities Sold for 500 Euros – online identities value is diminishing these days!https://t.co/UfEcsLBiKz#DarkWeb #ThreatIntel @BleepinComputer @Bank_Security @USCERT_gov @IndianCERT @NCSCgov @EU_Commission pic.twitter.com/iWXmu1r78M
— Cyble (@AuCyble) April 20, 2020
As a Forbes article reveals, the identities being sold does not come with passwords. Yet, Facebook users should not relax as the data has such sensitive details as; email addresses, names, Facebook IDs, dates of birth and phone numbers.
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This is sensitive because expert hackers can use these to create misleading links to deceive users into thinking they are legit. For example, if a hacker uses one’s email address, date of birth and phone number to send a falsified document, an ignorant user could think it is legit because of the aforementioned personal details.
Last year, there had been news about the same figure of Facebook users having their identities sold online. This time, researchers at Cyble had bought the data and checked it themselves. They confirmed that it is true.
Facebook had faced major privacy and security issues since its Cambridge Analytica scandal. It had also been in bad light following reports that it tracked users’ online activities.
While there is no statement yet from the company on this issue, the last time this had appeared it had said:
“We are looking into this, but believe it is likely information obtained before changes we made in the past few years to better protect people’s information.”
Doffman who writes for Forbes advises that Facebook users should change their passwords. Also, if you want to check if your profile is among those being sold online, go to Cyble’s website. The page claims to have 32,058,650,585 records with an index of over 28,000 data breaches.
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