Facebook previously denied the allegation by saying the data is breached in 2019 and they do not have much control over the leaked data. Moreover, during the study of the leaked data, the CEO of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg has been found on Signal – a rival platform of Whatsapp, which is owned by the co-founder of Whatsapp.
Facebook says, we have a dedicated team to address these kinds of issues and understand the impact they have on our users. They added the hacker did not hack into our current system, instead, the data is collected by scraping from our platform prior to September 2019 which already was fixed. The leaked information did not include any financial and health information or password.
Scrapping is a common technique that relies on automated software to lift public information from the internet that can end up being distributed in online forums.
How did this happen?
As per Facebook, the profiles are accessed by malicious actors using our contact importer prior to September 2019 and they already made changes to the contact importer. Actually, this feature was designed to help people easily find their friends to connect on our platform using their contact lists. Moreover, they updated it to prevent malicious actors from using software to imitate our app and upload a large set of phone numbers to see which ones matched Facebook users.
The statement of Facebook is still contradictory as, how data scraping was possible on such a massive scale of 533 million users. Recent Facebook data leaks, contradictory terms, and conditions of WhatsApp, data gathering are still among the major reasons why people would prefer to switching another major platform. And, Mark Zuckerberg using a platform like Signal with end-to-end encryption does make a negative impact on Facebook and its associated firms.
Keeping Account Safe
As per Facebook, while we addressed the issue identified in 2019, it’s always good for everyone to make sure that their settings aligned accordingly to what the data be shared publicly. However, the one that is currently used, as well as suggested is to use two-factor authentication. Regular privacy checks within the application can also aid in preventing unauthorized access to the data. Furthermore, we highly advise being specific on what informations should be kept confidential and what should be made public. While many people do not pay attention to it, we highly advise that you do. It protects your profile from intruders while still protecting your privacy.
There was a report, back in 2019, about an unsecured cloud server containing a database of Facebook in September. According to reports, the data was made publicly inaccessible anymore but, the recent data leak proved it wrong.
