ALL ABOUT FACEBOOK DATA LEAK, EFFECTS AND PRECAUTIONS.

It’s not the primary time facebook is affected by a knowledge breach. Recently, on Saturday a hacking forum exposed the phone numbers and private data of many many Facebook users for free of charge online. The data is widely available and accessible to take advantage of by everyone.

The breached data includes personal information of over 533 million Facebook users from 106 countries, including over 32 million Facebook users within the US, 11 million Facebook users within the UK, and 6 million on Facebook users in India. It exposes facebook users' phone numbers, Facebook IDs, full names, locations, birthdates, bios, and in some cases email addresses.

Alon Gal the CTO of cybercrime intelligence firm Hudson Rock, first discovered the leaked data in January when a user within the same hacking forum advertised an automatic bot that would provide phone numbers for many many Facebook users in exchange for a price. Motherboard reported there on bot verified that the info was legitimate.

The whole dataset has been posted on the hacking forum for free of any cost, making it widely available to anyone and everyone with rudimentary data skills.

To see whether your information was exposed go to HaveIBeenPwned.com, a database maintained by security analyst Troy Hunt. It lets anyone enter their email address and cross-references it with quite 10 billion accounts compromised in past breaches to work out whether they have been “pwned,” or compromised.

Some users have their passwords also exposed in data breaches. Hunt’s sites also provide a password search that lets people know if their password has ever fallen into the hands of hackers.

Effects:

* Cybercriminals can continuously leverage phishing and others.

* The Facebook data could also find yourself getting used in ransomware or blackmailing attacks.

* Cybercriminals can perform social engineering techniques to realize unauthorized access to systems and data.

* Personal details of people and details on their personality, political inclination, food habit preferences and allied was shared to varied companies searching for it hungrily. This becomes more dangerous if details on debit/credit cards or identity proof details get leaked which may be misused by people and also anti-national outfits to realize access to varied services.

* Cybercriminals try every available tactic to infiltrate, expose and take advantage of this sensitive information.

* Malware or supply chain attacks.

Precaution:

* You should change passwords after a breach. Cancel a MasterCard.

* If your email address was exposed, you ought to change your password thereto email account and found out multifactor authentication to secure your email.

* Stay alert and updated of any suspicious activity on any of your accounts. If you are doing detect suspicious activity, change your password and get in touch with that account’s administrator.

* One important step is to easily, well, lie. When you’re fixing an account, you don’t get to tell the entire truth.

* Just in case you get a call from a financial organization that raises your suspicions, call back employing a number you discover on your statement or the rear of your MasterCard.

* If you get a suspicious-looking email, don’t open it rather delete it.

* Examine the link before clicking on a link, try hovering your mouse over it. this may reveal the complete address, which may expose signs of fraud.

* Misspellings are also another sign of a fake website.

* Don’t open attachments. they’ll contain malware. And you ought to never type tip into a form attached to an email.

* Be especially wary of emails posing for account numbers, MasterCard numbers, and wire transfer information.

* Install an antivirus program on your device and keep it up so far.

* Keep your digital devices updated.

An attack like this could encourage consumers to adopt security practices like two-factor authentication, strong, unique, and credit freezes. within the end, personally identifiable data will endure in a way that financial information might not. “Digital data is sort of a genie during a bottle,” Oppenheim says. “Once it gets out of the bottle, it’s extremely difficult — if not impossible — to catch on back in.”

Stay updated, stay safe.