{"id":483,"date":"2019-09-05T09:13:50","date_gmt":"2019-09-05T09:13:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.fiveminutesspare.com\/technology\/?p=483"},"modified":"2019-09-05T09:13:50","modified_gmt":"2019-09-05T09:13:50","slug":"facebook-confirms-that-419m-phone-numbers-have-been-exposed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fiveminutesspare.com\/technology\/facebook-confirms-that-419m-phone-numbers-have-been-exposed\/tech-news\/","title":{"rendered":"Facebook confirms that 419m phone numbers have been exposed"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Millions of Facebook users&#8217; phone numbers were exposed in an open online database in the company&#8217;s latest privacy lapses. The database was not password protected even though it contained users mobile numbers which were linked to accounts, this means anyone could have gotten access to them if looking.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_484\" style=\"width: 801px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-484\" class=\"wp-image-484 \" src=\"http:\/\/www.fiveminutesspare.com\/technology\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/14\/2019\/09\/1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"791\" height=\"514\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.fiveminutesspare.com\/technology\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/14\/2019\/09\/1.jpg 1000w, https:\/\/www.fiveminutesspare.com\/technology\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/14\/2019\/09\/1-300x195.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.fiveminutesspare.com\/technology\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/14\/2019\/09\/1-768x499.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 791px) 100vw, 791px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-484\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Editorial credit: Chinnapong \/ Shutterstock.com<\/p><\/div>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">The server does not belong to Facebook however the database has a unique Facebook ID linked to each of the phone numbers. It is believed that 133m of the numbers are US users, 18m are Uk users and 50m are Vietnam users.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Facebook have confirmed the reports and said they are currently investigating when and who had accessed the database.\u00a0 The spokesperson also said that the database has been taken down, confirming that there is \u201cno evidence that Facebook accounts were compromised\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">They believe that the records were most likely collected by using a tool that Facebook had disabled in April 2018 after the Cambridge Analytica controversy. Facebook emphasized that the exposed data was \u201cold\u201d and would have been removed prior to the April 2018 policy change.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">\u201cThis dataset is old and appears to have information obtained before we made changes last year to remove people\u2019s ability to find others using their phone numbers,\u201d<strong> a spokeswoman said in a statement.<\/strong> \u201cThe dataset has been taken down and we have seen no evidence that Facebook accounts were compromised.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Millions of Facebook users&#8217; phone numbers were exposed in an open online database in the company&#8217;s latest privacy lapses. The database was not password protected even though it contained users mobile numbers which were linked to accounts, this means anyone could have gotten access to them if looking.\u00a0 The server does not belong to Facebook&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":484,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[203,107],"class_list":["post-483","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tech-news","tag-facebook","tag-social-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fiveminutesspare.com\/technology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/483","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fiveminutesspare.com\/technology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fiveminutesspare.com\/technology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fiveminutesspare.com\/technology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fiveminutesspare.com\/technology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=483"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.fiveminutesspare.com\/technology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/483\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":485,"href":"https:\/\/www.fiveminutesspare.com\/technology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/483\/revisions\/485"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fiveminutesspare.com\/technology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/484"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fiveminutesspare.com\/technology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=483"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fiveminutesspare.com\/technology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=483"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fiveminutesspare.com\/technology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=483"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}