Millions of Facebook users’ phone numbers may still be exposed online

Millions of Facebook users’ phone numbers may still be exposed online                                                                                                                            Data scraped from an exposed Facebook database containing user smartphone numbers and statistics that connected the ones phone numbers to names and other profile statistics has popped returned up in a separate online repository, even after the preliminary database turned into mysteriously pulled offline, consistent with a file final night time from CNET.The initial, unprotected database contained extra than 400 million statistics of Facebook customers throughout the US, UK, and Vietnam. The publicity, pronounced first by using TechCrunch in advance this week, is thought to have affected a total of around 2 hundred million customers.Speaking with UK safety researcher Elliott Murray, CNET reviews that the present day trove of cellphone number records seems to had been absolutely scraped from the sooner database. It’s doubtful who owns either database, but Facebook confirmed the statistics was scraped from a server that saved it as part of a feature that let users appearance each other up with the aid of their phone numbers. Facebook has now not stated how the facts was taken off Facebook servers and why it was available on-line without any shape of security safety.THE PHONE NUMBERS ARE STILL OUT THERE AND ACCESSIBLE BY ANYONE WHO KNOWS WHERE TO LOOK After TechCrunch and security researcher Sanyam Jain contacted the net host of the preliminary server on Wednesday, the owner took the database offline. “This records set is vintage and appears to have records received before we made modifications closing 12 months to dispose of human beings’s capacity to locate others the usage of their smartphone numbers,” a Facebook spokesperson told TechCrunch on the time. “The statistics set has been taken down and we have visible no evidence that Facebook debts were compromised.”However, it seems some other third birthday party were given its fingers on the statistics before Facebook did and has copied at least a number of it, if not all of it, onto a separate server. Murray tells CNET the facts observed on this new database is “almost in reality the equal” as the information within the initial one. Murray did now not reveal wherein or how he came throughout the new database.CNET additionally contacted a person whose smartphone number become proven within the database to have as soon as been related to Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes, and the individual, who declined to be named, stated they obtained the phone variety earlier this yr and are regularly contacted mistakenly for humans looking for Hughes.Facebook did not reaction to a request for comment on whether or not this information was equal to the scraped records inside the previous database, and the way it plans to control the takedown of this information now that it's miles now not stored on one among its own servers.                                                                                                                                                                                     cite de lutilisatteur pour expllquer ICI                                                                                                                                                                   (archives -Wikipédia-Internet-Google)