Unprotected Facebook user data exposed in latest leaks
The data set had been uploaded to the servers by two different Facebook app developers.
Another day, another data leak involving Facebook. Cybersecurity firm UpGuard discovered two troves of unprotected Facebook user data on Amazon’s servers, putting to risk hundreds of millions of records about users.
The data include details on names, passwords, comments, interest, and likes. According to Wired, the data set had been uploaded to the servers by two different Facebook app developers.
One of the databases belonged to a Mexican company called Cultura Colectiva which used the Amazon servers to store some 146 GB of data, including 540 million different records. The company was alerted back in January, but the database was secured only yesterday when Facebook was contacted about it.
The second database belonged to an app called At the Pool, which shut down back in 2014. It contained plaintext user passwords for 22,000 users. Although these passwords are presumed for the app rather than for the users’ Facebook account, it puts to risk those reusing the same passwords across accounts.
The findings illustrate the limits of Facebook’s control over information it has already given away. Last year, Facebook faced global reputational damage when analytics company Cambridge Analytica was found misusing user data of over 87 million Facebook users to build tools to influence the US presidential elections in 2016.