Massive breach leaves 267 million Facebook users' data exposed

The leaked information included Facebook IDs, phone numbers, and real names.

What you need to know


A massive data breach affecting 267 million Facebook users was publicized this week.
The database was exposed on the internet and accessible without any authentication or password requirements.
It contained users' IDs, phone numbers, and real names.


While Facebook's busy making its own OS, millions of the company's users' data has been leaked, thanks to one of the largest data breaches in the company's history.

Cybersecurity firm Comparitech and researcher Bob Diachenko say they've found a database containing the Facebook IDs, phone numbers, and names of 267 million users on the web. The database, they claim, was entirely exposed on the internet and did not require a password or any other form of authentication to access.

They posit that the origins of the database probably lie in Facebook API abuse by criminals in Vietnam or an illegal data scraping operation. While Diachenko im...