

To train individuals on the tell-tale signs of these attacks, phishing prevention systems can create harmless emails posing as an online meeting invitation or document sharing links.

Phishing attacks are confidence scams, typically sent via email, where attackers pose as a reputable person or organization in hopes of stealing information or gaining access to a network. If you suspect that you’re a victim of the most recent Facebook breach, it’s important to act quickly and secure the information you can by following the steps below. Noting that Facebook has done little to notify its userbase of the breach, most people may not realize their data has been compromised until days, weeks, or even months after the event. That said, a simple way to check if your email or phone number has been compromised is to visit . Upon entering your phone or email address, the system will quickly run the information through its list of known breaches to determine if any accounts have been compromised. In both cases, the social networking site didn’t allow users to opt-out. Additionally, in 2019, Facebook added the ability to use phone numbers as a means to look up user profiles. In 2012, Facebook began requiring individuals to confirm their phone numbers for account recovery. While there are many ways in which cybercriminals could use this data, it’s speculated that scammers have already begun to wield this information in online impersonation and phishing scams. In addition to these fraudulent schemes, one cybercriminal has used this information to create an automated bot that allows phone numbers to be matched with corresponding Facebook IDs to give hackers immediate access to compromised accounts for as little as $20. That said, while the risk is real, Facebook has yet to contact individuals that were exposed by the attack.īut this isn’t the first time Facebook has faced backlash regarding its policies that require individuals to enter their phone number when creating an account. On April 3, 2021, the information of more than 530 million Facebook users was published to a well-known hacking forum. While the leak appears to have been the result of a vulnerability that was patched in 2019, the slightly dated information still poses a huge risk to those individuals that created a Facebook account before 2020. Within the forum post, hackers responsible for the breach freely shared the phone numbers, email addresses, dates of birth, and even locations of compromised accounts. As hackers are getting more sophisticated and requiring less input from unsuspecting victims, something as simple as your phone number landing into the wrong hands can lead to all your personal information being compromised. Similar to the Instagram data breach we reported here, Facebook, the most popular social networking platform in the world, is in hot water for its lax policies on data management and the privacy of its userbase. With 1.4 billion active users daily sharing updates, pictures, and videos, it’s important that their sensitive information stays safe.
