Database of Facebook User phone numbers is offline



On September 5th, an unsecured online cloud based server leaked a database of Facebook user phone numbers, this links the name and purported phone number of Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg. Mark Zuckerberg among others on the Facebook team experienced the hack and leaks portrayed by this unsecured server. When the CNET called the leaked number it rang straight to voicemail.The CNET then decided to redact the number. Elliott Murray, a cybersecurity researcher in the UK, discovered that this leak may have been caused by data that was scraped up by Facebook in a recent, but now-defunct feature that allowed users to look each other up by phone number. Murray also was able to match a known phone number of a Facebook user provided by CNET with the correct name in the publicly accessible database. With this discovery, we as media consumers now know the dangers that an unsecured serves and unprotected databases may have. Many consumers can easily fall for an unprotected database and could possibly give away sensitive information they may not want leaked.  Many organizations have recently moved their databases to an online platform which means their still very vulnerable to a leak. Without the correct expertise, databases may be more accessible and not as secure as they should be. For example, data that is protected by a password may be accessible to anyone with a web browser and the correct IP address. Exposed data can lead to consumers receiving fraud or scammer like calls. Many organizations are now cracking down on "scraping" data from its users to prevent these types of problems from occurring.

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