It is not the first time it has happened. In fact, although alarmed, many users were not surprised when just a few days ago we learned that the personal data of 11 million Spanish users of Facebook , one of the most important, popular and well-known social networks of the moment, had been leaked.
Although the social network itself has indicated that this data was possibly obtained before August 2019 (when the company corrected a vulnerability that led to massive data theft ), we have known that it was last Saturday when a user published the phone numbers and other personal data of hundreds of millions of Facebook users.
The exposed data includes the personal information of more than 533 million users , spread over 106 countries, including more than 32 million registered users in the United States or, closer, 11 million users in Spain.
Among the published data it is possible to find details related to their Facebook ID, full names, dates of birth, phone numbers, locations, related information about the biography and, in some cases, even email addresses.
And even when the social network talks about “old data” , it is evident that we are facing a real threat for all affected users , not only because it is not a dish of good taste to know that our full name, telephone number and E-mail addresses are available to be consulted by anyone through a hacking forum, but because it is possible that we easily spoof us.
How did it happen?
Although the personal data of so many users were published just a few days ago, the truth is that experts agree that, in reality, it would not be a current vulnerability of the social network , but an old one. In other words, the theft of the data occurred a few years ago . And, since then, the possibilities that any user could republish them was more than evident.
According to specialists, the theft of the data occurred in April 2019 , as the security company UpGuard found at the time, who published a note indicating that the team of researchers had found two sets of data of Facebook with a weight of 146 GB and more than 540 million records.
Therefore, for “greater peace of mind”, it is not a current vulnerability of the social network, but an old one.
How do I know if I am a user affected by this problem?
In our country, just to cite a brief example, 11 million Spanish accounts have been affected by this leak. Therefore, if we have a Facebook account, it is advisable to try to find out if our personal data has also been published or not. Unfortunately, the process is not as straightforward as we would like to start with.
One of the easiest and fastest options is to access the website Have I been Pwned, officially created by Troy Hunt, a well-known security analyst, who also works at Microsoft, and which offers us the possibility of discovering if our email or number phone numbers have been affected.
To do this, the system obtains copies of all the leaks published so far, and offers the possibility of using a simple search engine to enter our data. Of course, indicate that Hunt ensures that it does not keep the records of the searches that are carried out.
The process to follow is actually quite simple. Once we are inside the aforementioned website, we will have to go to the search engine and enter our email or phone number to carry out the check. If we choose to check our telephone number, it is essential to include the international code before the numbering itself.
After entering our email or phone, click on the button ‘Pwned?’ and we will immediately have access to the results, which will be displayed just below the search engine. And how to interpret the results?
- Green screen. It means that our email or phone number has not been leaked.
- Red screen. That particular data has been leaked.
In case the screen that appears is red, we can slide to the bottom of the results page to see where it happened.
How many times has something similar happened with Facebook?
As we mentioned at the beginning, as far as this social network is concerned, it is true that it is not the first time that it happens . Not surprisingly, the first time that something similar was recorded was in June 2013 , when Facebook discovered that an error had exposed the personal data of 6 million users to unauthorized people for more than a year (at Apparently, this bug started in 2012, but was not discovered until 12 months later).
A few years later, in May 2018 , a system failure caused normally private user posts to be shared publicly without their consent or knowledge for a period of around five days. At that time the incident affected 14 million users .
Months later, in September 2018 , and after the Cambridge Analytica scandal, it was publicly announced that the attackers had managed to access between 50 and 90 million user accounts , being able to freely access the entire profile of the affected users.
However, it was in 2019 that the massive data thefts that we are facing now took place.
The first, in March 2019 , at least 600 million users saw their passwords being published in plain text files, in an incident that also affected Instagram.
A month later, in April 2019 , the UpGuard company discovered the massive theft of data from more than 540 million users . And it is these data that finally, just a few days ago, have been made public.
