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In the wake of the leak of personal information from more than 500 million Facebook users, you can do it to protect yourself.
The leak, reported on April 3, included Facebook IDs, phone numbers, birth dates, biographical details and more. This information has been made publicly available in an uninsured database.
“Am I pinned?” is a popular website that allows you to check if your personal data has been compromised. To date, this has been done by entering your email address.
However, because of the Facebook violation, Troy Hunt, owner of the site, said he changed the site to make phone numbers searchable for the Facebook violation as well.
The leak, reported on April 3, included Facebook IDs, phone numbers, birth dates, biographical details and more. This information was made available in an unsecured database. (AP Photo / Jenny Kane, file)
LINKEDIN SAY SCRATCHED SOME USER DATA AND FOR SALE
“The Facebook data has changed all that. There are over 500 million phone numbers, but only a few million email addresses, so> 99% of people got a ‘miss’ when they had to ‘hit’ get, “Hunt wrote in a blog post.
“There was a lot of interest in this incident,” Hunt said, adding that he was seeing “almost unprecedented traffic” to the site due to Facebook’s violation.
In response to a query from FOX Business, Facebook pointed to a blog post from April 6th.
The leak involves old data from a 2019 offense and that it was ‘addressed’ at the time, Facebook said.
“It is important to understand that malicious actors did not obtain this data by hacking their systems, but by deleting it from our platform before September 2019,” Facebook said in the blog post.
| Ticker | Safety | Last | Alter | Alter% |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| FB | FACEBOOK, INC. | 312.46 | -0.56 | -0.18% |
| GOOGL | ALPHABET, INC. | 2 270.67 | +20.24 | + 0.90% |
Scratch refers to the use of automated software to retrieve public information from the Internet, which is then disseminated in online forums.
Facebook recommends that your settings ‘match’ what your audience wants to share.
For example, update the “How people find and contact you” found under “Settings and privacy”.
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Facebook also recommends that you do a “privacy survey” that includes “who can see what you share” and “how to keep your account secure”, where you can also enable two-factor verification.
Outside the Facebook violation
Password leaks are one of the most common violations of sensitive personal information. “Am I pinned?” will also check if your email is part of a password breach.
Google also tracks it in your Google Account. Go to https://myaccount.google.com/ and you will see a “Critical Security Issues” alert. Clicking on the link will take you to a page where you can conduct a “Security Check” and change passwords that have been compromised.