Facebook removes over 540 million exposed user records stored on Amazon's servers
5 years, 9 months ago

Facebook removes over 540 million exposed user records stored on Amazon's servers

India Today  

Facebook is in soup - again. Just last month, it was reported that Account passwords of nearly 600 million Facebook users, that were stored in plain text, were accessible by over 20,000 Facebook employees. And now nearly two weeks later, a smilar report suggesting that millions records of Facebook users were exposed on Amazon's servers. According to a Bloomberg report, researchers at UpGuard, which is a cybersecurity firm, have discovered over 540 million records of users' Facebook interactions left exposed online by third-parties on Amazon's cloud computing servers. As per the report, Cultura Colectiva openly stored nearly 540 million records of Facebook users' data detailing information such as their account names, reactions, likes, comments and even their Facebook Ids.

Records Users Pool User Data Facebook User Upguard Cultura Colectiva Facebook User Data  facebook  user  data  million  users  nearly  report  stored  exposed  amazons  removes  records  540  servers  upguard

History of this topic

Facebook faces another user data leak, researchers reveal
7 months ago

Facebook faces another user data leak, researchers reveal

India TV News  

Cybersecurity researchers have reported an alleged data leak which involve at least one lakh users of Facebook which appeared on a data breach forum. The team from CyberPeace, a New Delhi-based non-profit organisation alleged that 1,00,000 lines of fresh user data from Facebook have surfaced on a data breach forum. “Facebook faces potential reputational damage due to concerns about data …

Meta says nearly a million Facebook users’ login information compromised by malicious apps
2 years, 2 months ago

Meta says nearly a million Facebook users’ login information compromised by malicious apps

The Hindu  

About a million Facebook users’ accounts may have been compromised after they downloaded malicious apps that stole login information, Meta Platforms said last week. According to a company blog post on October 7, Meta identified over 400 malicious Android and iOS apps that tried to steal users’ credentials, mainly by having them log in through Facebook. “We’ve reported these malicious …

Usernames, passwords of 1 million Facebook users ‘compromised’: Meta
2 years, 3 months ago

Usernames, passwords of 1 million Facebook users ‘compromised’: Meta

Hindustan Times  

Meta Platforms, the company formerly known as Facebook Inc., said on Friday usernames and passwords of around 1 million Facebook users have been ‘compromised,’ adding that those affected will be notified about the situation. “This year, we identified more than 400 ‘malicious’ apps, on both Android and iOS, that target internet users and steal their login information,” Meta stated. Meanwhile, …

Writing on the wall
2 years, 10 months ago

Writing on the wall

The Hindu  

A lot can happen in a year. In January 2021, when Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg presented the social media giant’s fourth-quarter earnings, he said he plans to increase privacy-focused features, blend social commerce with messaging applications, and build the next computing platform. Facebook waning Though Facebook does not share data about the number of active users app wise, its core …

FB whistleblower calls for regulation
3 years, 3 months ago

FB whistleblower calls for regulation

The Hindu  

A Facebook whistleblower went before U.S. lawmakers on Tuesday to push them to regulate the social media giant, after an outage hit potentially billions of users and highlighted global dependence on its services. She spoke to Senators less than a day after Facebook, its photo-sharing app Instagram and messaging service WhatsApp went offline for roughly seven hours, with “billions of …

Signal Ads Seemingly Banned by Facebook for Showing How it Exploits User Data
3 years, 8 months ago

Signal Ads Seemingly Banned by Facebook for Showing How it Exploits User Data

News 18  

That Facebook uses, and to a large extent exploits user data openly and widely to serve its commercial purposes is really to nobody’s surprise any longer. Facebook was not into that idea.” Facebook’s collected data includes details such as occupation, most streamed or read content, live GPS coordinates, sexual preference, religious beliefs, food allergies, shopping history and more. The series …

Explained | How Facebook’s recent data breach affect its users
3 years, 8 months ago

Explained | How Facebook’s recent data breach affect its users

The Hindu  

Facebook has suffered yet another data breach, only this time, private information from 533 million accounts have been leaked online. Even the company’s founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s private credentials are part of the larger leaked data set from 2019. Private information of users was primarily obtained by exploiting Facebook’s contact importer feature that allows users to find friends on …

What Really Caused Facebook's 500M-User Data Leak?
55 years ago

What Really Caused Facebook's 500M-User Data Leak?

Wired  

Since Saturday, a massive trove of Facebook data has circulated publicly, splashing information from roughly 533 million Facebook users across the internet. Or was it the 419 million Facebook user records, including hundreds of millions of phone numbers, names, and Facebook IDs, scraped from the social network by bad actors before a 2018 Facebook policy change, that were exposed publicly …

Explained: Leaked Data of 533mn Facebook Users Reemerges Online, Why FB's Reply is Unconvincing
3 years, 9 months ago

Explained: Leaked Data of 533mn Facebook Users Reemerges Online, Why FB's Reply is Unconvincing

News 18  

Facebook is back in the limelight for all the wrong reasons, and this time, a new report claims that the personal data of over 533 million users have surfaced on a hacker forum, practically for free of cost. Both the Business Insider team and Gal reportedly reviewed a sample of the leaked data and verified several records by matching known …

Facebook data on more than 500 million accounts found online
3 years, 9 months ago

Facebook data on more than 500 million accounts found online

The Hindu  

Details from more than 500 million Facebook users have been found available on a website for hackers. According to that publication, it has information from 106 countries including phone numbers, Facebook IDs, full names, locations, birthdates, and email addresses. In 2018, the social media giant disabled a feature that allowed users to search for one another via phone number following …

Facebook Data On More Than 500M Accounts Found Online
3 years, 9 months ago

Facebook Data On More Than 500M Accounts Found Online

News 18  

Details from more than 500 million Facebook users have been found available on a website for hackers. According to that publication, it has info from 106 countries including phone numbers, Facebook IDs, full names, locations, birthdates, and email addresses. In 2018, the social media giant disabled a feature that allowed users to search for one another via phone number following …

Facebook faces new UK class action
3 years, 10 months ago

Facebook faces new UK class action

The Hindu  

Facebook is facing a second London High Court class action over allegations it failed to protect the personal details of about one million people in England and Wales, in the latest lawsuit to spring from a scandal over data harvesting. Journalist and writer Peter Jukes said on Tuesday he had filed a lawsuit for unspecified but "substantial" damages three years …

CBI books Cambridge Analytica over Facebook data theft
3 years, 11 months ago

CBI books Cambridge Analytica over Facebook data theft

Hindustan Times  

The Central Bureau of Investigation has registered a case against Alexander Nix of British political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica and Aleksandr Kogan of Global Science Research Limited, UK, for allegedly harvesting personal data of up to 562,000 Indians from Facebook for commercial purposes, officials said on Friday. The agency said that the app illegally collected additional unauthorised data of users …

CBI books Cambridge Analytica, Global Science Research for illegally harvesting data of Facebook users
3 years, 11 months ago

CBI books Cambridge Analytica, Global Science Research for illegally harvesting data of Facebook users

India TV News  

The Central Bureau of Investigation has filed a case against UK-based Cambridge Analytica and Global Science Research Ltd. It alleged that they were involved in illegal harvesting of personal data of 5.62 lakh Indian Facebook users for commercial purposes. The CBI's action came after a preliminary enquiry into the matter which showed that Global Science Research had created an app …

Agency homing in on social media companies’ data collection
4 years ago

Agency homing in on social media companies’ data collection

Associated Press  

WASHINGTON — Federal regulators are ordering Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, TikTok’s parent and five other social media companies to provide detailed information on how they collect and use consumers’ personal data and how their practices affect children and teens. With its new request, the FTC wants to know how social media and video streaming services collect, use and track consumers’ personal …

Amazon, TikTok, Facebook, Others Ordered To Explain What They Do With User Data
4 years ago

Amazon, TikTok, Facebook, Others Ordered To Explain What They Do With User Data

NPR  

Amazon, TikTok, Facebook, Others Ordered To Explain What They Do With User Data Enlarge this image toggle caption Eric Piermont/AFP/Getty Images Eric Piermont/AFP/Getty Images Updated Wednesday at 6:30 a.m. ET The Federal Trade Commission is demanding that nine social media and tech companies share details on how they harness users' data and what they do with the information. The inquiry …

Facebook sued for ‘predatory’ conduct by U.S. government, States
4 years, 1 month ago

Facebook sued for ‘predatory’ conduct by U.S. government, States

The Hindu  

The U.S. government and 48 States and districts sued Facebook on Wednesday, accusing it of abusing its market power in social networking to crush smaller competitors and seeking remedies that could include a forced spinoff of the social network’s Instagram and WhatsApp messaging services. James noted at a press conference that “it’s really critically important that we block this predatory …

US govt, states sue Facebook for ‘predatory’ conduct
4 years, 1 month ago

US govt, states sue Facebook for ‘predatory’ conduct

Associated Press  

WASHINGTON — The U.S. government and 48 states and districts sued Facebook Wednesday, accusing it of abusing its market power in social networking to crush smaller competitors and seeking remedies that could include a forced spinoff of the social network’s Instagram and WhatsApp messaging services. James noted at a press conference that “it’s really critically important that we block this …

Facebook — The beleaguered king of social media
4 years, 4 months ago

Facebook — The beleaguered king of social media

The Hindu  

A recent article in The Wall Street Journal spoke of a political problem in Facebook’s India operations that hit home hard. Editorial | Data power: On Facebook and BJP India, as the biggest market for the company’s eponymous social media platform and its messaging utility WhatsApp, is widely exposed to the data-sucking machines that operate behind the friendly facades of …

Facebook acknowledges that it shared data of some inactive users with third-party apps, says the issue has now been fixed
4 years, 6 months ago

Facebook acknowledges that it shared data of some inactive users with third-party apps, says the issue has now been fixed

Firstpost  

Facebook says that from the past several months, approximately 5,000 developers continued to receive user data even after they were inactive for over 90 days. Facebook says that from the past several months, approximately 5,000 third-party app developers continued to receive the data that people had previously authorised, even after they were inactive on Facebook for over 90 days. Facebook …

Facebook sues data analytics firm for harvesting users data
4 years, 10 months ago

Facebook sues data analytics firm for harvesting users data

The Hindu  

Facebook has filed a federal lawsuit in California court against New Jersey-based data analytics firm OneAudience for secretly harvesting its users’ data. According to the lawsuit, OneAudience improperly accessed and collected user data from Facebook and other social media companies by paying App developers to install a malicious Software Development Kit in their apps. In November last year, Facebook and …

Activists write to Facebook against encryption, says it will dent bid to curb child pornography
4 years, 11 months ago

Activists write to Facebook against encryption, says it will dent bid to curb child pornography

Hindustan Times  

More than 100 child protection organizations, including some from India, have urged Facebook to halt plans for strong encryption of all its platforms, saying the move will deal a blow to attempts to check the spread of child pornography. Activists argued that while there was a “legitimate interest” among users to keep their data safe, Facebook has a responsibility to …

Facebook investigating data breach where names, phone numbers of over 267 million users was reportedly exposed
5 years ago

Facebook investigating data breach where names, phone numbers of over 267 million users was reportedly exposed

Firstpost  

The database was apparently made available for download last week on an online hacker forum that apparently belonged to a crime group. Facebook on Thursday said it is investigating a report that a database containing names and phone numbers of more than 267 million users was exposed online. Comparitech said that security researcher Bob Diachenko spotted the database, which was …

Facebook and Twitter: 'Personal data of hundreds of users may have been improperly accessed'
5 years, 1 month ago

Facebook and Twitter: 'Personal data of hundreds of users may have been improperly accessed'

Daily Mail  

Facebook and Twitter have confirmed that the personal data of hundreds of their users may have been 'improperly accessed' by third-party apps. The security breach has reportedly affected Android users who accessed the Giant Square and Photofy apps via their social media accounts. Facebook and Twitter have confirmed that the personal data of hundreds of their users may have been …

Documents show how Facebook harnessed user data
5 years, 2 months ago

Documents show how Facebook harnessed user data

The Hindu  

Leaked documents from a civil suit against Facebook show how the social network aimed to employ user data as a tool for bargaining and to manipulate competitors, NBC News reported on Wednesday. Some 7,000 pages of documents reveal how Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg and his team harnessed users’ personal information to reward partners by giving them preferential data, while depriving …

Facebook used user data as a weapon against rivals, offered it up as a sop to friends: Report
5 years, 2 months ago

Facebook used user data as a weapon against rivals, offered it up as a sop to friends: Report

Firstpost  

A trove of 7,000 pages of leaked documents shows exactly how Facebook leveraged user data against rivals. The documents were originally obtained by NBC from British investigative journalist Duncan Campbell, which shows how Facebook would reward favoured companies by giving them greater access to user data. The documents also highlighted that when a messaging app became popular and threatened Facebook’s …

US House panel taps defunct startup for Facebook files
5 years, 3 months ago

US House panel taps defunct startup for Facebook files

Associated Press  

A U.S. congressional committee has requested a trove of internal Facebook documents that the company’s critics say will demonstrate how the social media giant unfairly leveraged its market dominance to crush or absorb competitors. At issue here is a cache of internal Facebook documents unearthed in a case brought by Six4Three, a defunct startup whose founders have waged a bitter …

Facebook suspends thousands of apps over Cambridge Analytica privacy scandal
5 years, 3 months ago

Facebook suspends thousands of apps over Cambridge Analytica privacy scandal

Firstpost  

The suspended apps are associated with about 400 developers, Facebook said Facebook Inc said on Friday it has suspended tens of thousands of apps on the social networking platform, as part of the company’s ongoing app developer investigation it began on March 2018 in response to the Cambridge Analytica row. The suspended apps are associated with about 400 developers, Facebook …

Facebook privacy lawsuit to proceed, court calls its views on privacy 'so wrong'
5 years, 4 months ago

Facebook privacy lawsuit to proceed, court calls its views on privacy 'so wrong'

Firstpost  

Facebook argued that users suffered no “tangible” harm during the scandal. A federal judge on Monday ordered Facebook Inc to face most of a nationwide lawsuit seeking damages for letting third parties such as Cambridge Analytica access users’ private data, calling the social media company’s views on privacy “so wrong.” While dismissing some claims, US District Judge Vince Chhabria in …

Indian-origin researcher finds 419mn Facebook users' exposed data
5 years, 4 months ago

Indian-origin researcher finds 419mn Facebook users' exposed data

The Quint  

San Francisco, Sep 5 Sanyam Jain, a security researcher and member at Hague-based non-profit organisation GDI Foundation, has discovered a massive database containing over 419 million phone numbers of Facebook users on an unsecured server which were available for anyone to access. The database included 133 million records of US-based Facebook users, 18 million records of UK users and more …

400 million Facebook users' phone numbers LEAKED in privacy lapse
5 years, 4 months ago

400 million Facebook users' phone numbers LEAKED in privacy lapse

India TV News  

Phone numbers of as many as 400 million Facebook users have been leaked, news agency AFP quoted the US media as saying. According to technology news site TechCruch, an exposed server stored 419 million records on users across several databases - including 133 million US accounts, more than 50 million in Vietnam, and 18 million in Britain. Facebook user IDs …

Facebook Funders threaten to quit as company fails to share data for research
5 years, 4 months ago

Facebook Funders threaten to quit as company fails to share data for research

Firstpost  

Funders say that Facebook has given access to only a portion of what they were told they could expect. A group of philanthropies working with Facebook Inc to study the social network’s impact on democracy threatened on Tuesday to quit, saying the company had failed to make data available to researchers as pledged. The founders said in a statement that …

Facebook given a deadline to provide researchers with data to study its impact on democracy
5 years, 4 months ago

Facebook given a deadline to provide researchers with data to study its impact on democracy

Firstpost  

Facebook had granted the 83 scholars selected for the project access to “only a portion of what they were told they could expect," A group of philanthropies working with Facebook Inc to study the social network’s impact on democracy threatened on Tuesday to quit, saying the company had failed to make data available to researchers as pledged. The funders said …

Facebook warned staff, not users about the known risks before 2018 breach
5 years, 4 months ago

Facebook warned staff, not users about the known risks before 2018 breach

India Today  

The year 2018 brought a series of bad news for Facebook. Now, almost a year later new details about a bug that affected the accounts of nearly 50 million Facebook users have surfaced online. Facebook users are suing the world's largest social media company on the grounds that it failed to warn its users about the known risks pertaining to …

Instagram Bans United States Firm For Improper Data Collection
5 years, 5 months ago

Instagram Bans United States Firm For Improper Data Collection

ABP News  

San Francisco: Facebook-owned Instagram has banned a San Francisco-based company from its platform on charges of improper user-data collection. Called Hyp3r, the start-up scraped public data such as users' physical locations, profile information and photos to serve better targeted ads. Information collected by Hyp3r also includes data stored in Instagram Stories that is content designed to disappear after 24 hours. …

Twitter apologises and admits to user data leak
5 years, 5 months ago

Twitter apologises and admits to user data leak

India TV News  

Twitter admits to inadvertently sharing users data with advertising and third-party partners, owing to the breach and identify privacy flaw and regretting the outcome. As per Twitter's blog post posted on Tuesday, the user information that could have been shared without permission could include country code and details of users engagement with ad and information about the ad. Also, read: …

Are Facebook users better off after its $5 billion fine?
5 years, 5 months ago

Are Facebook users better off after its $5 billion fine?

Associated Press  

If you’re one of Facebook’s more than 2 billion users, are you any better off now than you were before the Federal Trade Commission imposed new privacy restrictions and a $5 billion fine on the company this week? There’s no easy advice to give individuals about any switch they can flip to make the privacy risks go away.” Richardson said …

U.S. trade commission sues Cambridge Analytica for duping FB users
5 years, 5 months ago

U.S. trade commission sues Cambridge Analytica for duping FB users

The Hindu  

The US trade commission has filed a lawsuit against Cambridge Analytica, accusing the UK-based data company of adopting “deceptive tactics” to obtain personal information of Facebook users, a day after it imposed a $USD 5 billion fine on the social media giant for privacy violations. The Federal Trade Commission on Wednesday alleged that Cambridge Analytica, its former CEO Alexander Nix …

Facebook caught sharing private user data with telecom companies, phone makers: Report
5 years, 7 months ago

Facebook caught sharing private user data with telecom companies, phone makers: Report

Firstpost  

Facebook’s apps harvest and package eight different categories of information for use by 100 companies. The social media giant has been found to be offering private data of users to 100 different telecom companies and phone makers in 50 countries without their knowledge or consent. All this is allegedly being done through a corporate data-sharing programme announced by Facebook last …

Facebook leak of millions of user passwords investigated by Irish privacy regulator
5 years, 8 months ago

Facebook leak of millions of user passwords investigated by Irish privacy regulator

Firstpost  

With ten investigation open in Europe, Irish commission opens yet another one against Facebook. Ireland’s privacy regulator says it’s investigating Facebook over the social media giant’s recent revelation that it had left hundreds of millions of user passwords exposed. The company said last month that it had inadvertently stored passwords for users of Facebook, Facebook Lite and Instagram in plain …

Facebook being investigated for unauthorised storage of up to 1.5 million email IDs
5 years, 8 months ago

Facebook being investigated for unauthorised storage of up to 1.5 million email IDs

Firstpost  

Facebook said it may have “unintentionally uploaded” email contacts of up to 1.5 million new users New York Attorney General Letitia James said on Thursday she is investigating Facebook Inc’s unauthorised storage of up to 1.5 million Facebook users’ email contact databases, the latest privacy issue to affect the U.S. social media giant. Last week, Facebook said it may have …

Facebook now has 2.38 billion users
5 years, 8 months ago

Facebook now has 2.38 billion users

Live Mint  

Social media giant Facebook's monthly active users grew 8 per cent year-over-year MAUs to reach 2.38 billion at the end of first quarter of this year while the number of people using Facebook Stories hit 500 million every day. "Daily active users - DAUs were 1.56 billion on average for March 2019, an increase of 8 per cent year-over-year," the …

Facebook investigated in Ireland over mishandled passwords
5 years, 8 months ago

Facebook investigated in Ireland over mishandled passwords

CNN  

London CNN Business — Ireland’s data regulator has opened an investigation into Facebook for mishandling the passwords for hundreds of millions of its users. The probe announced Thursday by the Irish Data Protection Commission is the latest in a series of privacy and data investigations targeting Facebook, and could result in billions of dollars in penalties. The Irish regulator, which …

Facebook reveals millions of Instagram passwords were stored in plain text on its servers
5 years, 8 months ago

Facebook reveals millions of Instagram passwords were stored in plain text on its servers

Firstpost  

Our investigation has determined that these stored passwords were not internally abused, said Facebook Not a day goes by when we don’t hear of another Facebook screw-up. It has emerged that millions of Instagram users’ passwords were accidentally stored in plain text on Facebook’s servers. Just last month we had heard about how Facebook employees had access to around 600 …

Facebook exposed millions of Instagram passwords
5 years, 8 months ago

Facebook exposed millions of Instagram passwords

The Quint  

San Francisco, April 19 A day after admitting it "unintentionally" uploaded emails of nearly 1.5 million of new users, Facebook has now revealed that millions of Instagram passwords were stored on its servers in a readable format. Last month, Facebook said that it fixed a security issue wherein millions of its users' passwords were stored in plain text and "readable" …

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg leveraged user data as 'bargaining chip' against rivals
5 years, 8 months ago

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg leveraged user data as 'bargaining chip' against rivals

Firstpost  

Facebook rewarded companies that it favoured by giving them access to the data of its users. The documents obtained by NBC from a British investigative journalist Duncan Campbell, include emails, web chats, presentations, spreadsheets, and meeting summaries which show how Facebook would reward favoured companies by giving them greater access to user data. According to the documents, Facebook gave Amazon …

Facebook removes exposed user data, associated with two apps, stored on Amazon servers
5 years, 9 months ago

Facebook removes exposed user data, associated with two apps, stored on Amazon servers

Firstpost  

Cultura Colectiva said all of its Facebook records came from user interactions with its three pages on Facebook Facebook Inc said on Wednesday that it removed public databases containing its user data on Amazon.com Inc’s cloud servers after cybersecurity firm UpGuard discovered millions of exposed records. UpGuard’s Cyber Risk team announced in a blog post on Wednesday that Mexico City-based …

Facebook users' data exposed for an unknown period of time on Amazon public servers: Report
5 years, 9 months ago

Facebook users' data exposed for an unknown period of time on Amazon public servers: Report

Firstpost  

In yet another blow to Facebook’s data privacy concerns, researchers have indicated that the Facebook app developers left hundreds of millions of user records visible to anyone on public cloud servers. Australian cybersecurity startup company UpGuard has detailed that two third-party developed Facebook app datasets have been found exposed to the internet. We are committed to working with the developers …

Millions of Facebook records found on Amazon cloud servers
5 years, 9 months ago

Millions of Facebook records found on Amazon cloud servers

Live Mint  

Facebook Inc. user data is still showing up in places it shouldn’t. The discovery shows that a year after the Cambridge Analytica scandal exposed how unsecure and widely disseminated Facebook users’ information is online, companies that control that information at every step still haven’t done enough to seal up private data. In one instance, Mexico City-based digital platform Cultura Colectiva, …

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