267 Million Facebook IDs, Phone Numbers And Names Leaked

Facebook and data breaches are starting to sound synonymous with each other. After the notorious Cambridge Analytica fiasco, the largest social networking platform has continued to be a target for privacy advocates.

Once again, Facebook is in the news for all the wrong reasons. Bob Diachenko, a security researcher, in partnership with Comparitech, exposed a gigantic breach in Facebook security that led to millions of users' information being dumped online. As per the report, the trove of data containing Facebook user IDs of over 267 million users, along with their full names, phone numbers, and timestamps got leaked online for anyone to access for a whole week from December 12 to December 19.

Diachenko said the data belonged to a criminal organization, so it was reported to the ISP managing the IP address of the server to take it down. This latest Facebook data leak joins the plenty of occurrences, where user data was compromised. After Cambridge Analytica's breach of 87 million user profiles, the company faced a $1.63 billion fine over data breach that exposed 50 million accounts in October.

Likewise, in September this year, phone numbers of over 400 million Facebook users were dumped on an unsecured server. The enormous user base of Facebook makes it an ideal target for hackers, that is why the social network needs to improve its security.