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Phone Numbers For 533 Million Facebook Users Were Being Sold On Telegram (theverge.com) 35

Slashdot reader DevNull127 writes: This week a security researcher discovered a bot on Telegram that sold the phone numbers of Facebook users for $20 apiece. "The security researcher who found this vulnerability, Alon Gal, says that the person who runs the bot claims to have the information of 533 million users, which came from a Facebook vulnerability that was patched in 2019," reported the Verge. Motherboard reported the bot was also offering "bulk" pricing, selling 10,000 phone numbers for $5,000.

Telegram told the New York Post that they'd blocked the bot Tuesday morning, while Facebook downplayed the incident, reminding the Post "This is old data." But the Post notes that Facebook already had more than 1.6 billion daily active users in September 2019, and security researcher Alon Gal posted a count of the millions of affected users in each country, finding 32,315,282 in America, 11,522,328 in the United Kingdom, 7,320,478 in Australia, and 3,494,385 in Canada.

But the Verge points out the most ominous message of the breach: that ""the data is still out there on the web" — and that it's already resurfaced, more than once, in the days since it was initially scraped.

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Phone Numbers For 533 Million Facebook Users Were Being Sold On Telegram

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  • Old Data (Score:5, Insightful)

    by BinBoy ( 164798 ) on Saturday January 30, 2021 @03:37PM (#61009946) Homepage

    > "This is old data."

    Yeah, we've all changed our phone numbers since 2019.

    • Facebook knows from experience that it doesn't really need to explain itself - it only needs to say something which distracts its members just long enough for the next cat video or animated gif to show up in their feeds.

  • At least in the phone-book, there are also young people. :-)

    • Actually, you can't. They stopped publishing "the white pages" 20+ years ago.

      • by Anonymous Coward
        Not here they haven't, plus there is still the White Pages Online site that's not difficult to scrape.
      • They still send phone books out here every year, and they still have white pages. I suppose it's only a matter of time before they stop, I mean we do have access to the same information online, and many folks have dropped land lines in favor of cell phones only, and they don't publish cell phone numbers in the phone book here. (not sure if that's a thing anywhere)

      • by dcw3 ( 649211 )

        Actually, you can't. They stopped publishing "the white pages" 20+ years ago.

        Huh? No. We were still getting it every year in our suburban Washington DC home until we moved away just over a year ago.

  • by Anonymous Coward

    Literally, none whatsoever.

    Any they wonder why people don't trust them.

    1) losing data.
    2) not telling users about it, downplay, etc ,etc.

    sueballs.

  • Why would anyone put their phone number on Facebook? That's one of those optional things, like your school and your political beliefs.

  • ... 3,494,385 [numbers] in Canada.

    Canada/Population (2019): 37.59 million

    So basically nearly 10% of the Canadian population, eh?

    • Actually, the average person has about 3 numbers, one each for home, work, and cell. So, divide that by 3.

      • Actually, the average person has about 3 numbers, one each for home, work, and cell. So, divide that by 3.

        The summary says quantities are measured in "users" while the OP was measuring in "numbers". I can only assume that this is a metric vs imperial thing.

      • I have 1 and I wish I didn't have that one.
  • Phone Numbers? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by SlashbotAgent ( 6477336 ) on Saturday January 30, 2021 @04:33PM (#61010084)

    What if I told you of a time before the internet where the phone companies gave away books with all of people's personal information including Name, address, and phone number. Anyone could see any and all of them at any time!!

    Then the internet came along and you could look at any phone book anywhere in the world!!!

    What fucking moron would pay $5,000 for 10k phone numbers? And why would they pay for any of them?

    • I remember the pride I had when I first had my own home and my name in the phone book - not that anyone ever called me... Even back in the nineties, when I had to visit customers I could stop at a phone box, find their entry, and get not just their phone number, but also their street address. Nowadays we're all protecting out anonymity; no wonder some people feel cut-off.

      • by sconeu ( 64226 )

        I remember the pride I had when I first had my own home and my name in the phone book

        Navin R. Johnson approves of this comment.

  • by Tom ( 822 )

    This is old data."

    How often do you change your phone number, Mark?

    It may be old, but that doesn't mean it has changed.

  • Iâ(TM)m getting so many calls for car warranties?

  • I rarely give a phone number to a company if at all possible and Facebook is a company I don't trust

  • I've never been happier about refusing to give Facebook my phone number despite them telling me about how many of my friends have given theirs to them - and I'm waiting for my account to be deleted entirely.
  • I never give real contact information to any commercial entity, beyond the bare minimum necessary to do business with them. I believe the phone number I supplied to Facebook starts with area code 911... sure, go ahead and call me at that number all you want!
  • ...you dumb asses!
    • by dcw3 ( 649211 )

      I will, and they've never had my phone number. Not that it couldn't be found elsewhere, just like yours.

  • This may be a much bigger deal than some posting here realize. What is the likelihood people shared their listed land-line phone number with Facebook?

    A rising number of people have gone all-in with cell phone service, dropping the traditional, and often listed, land-line. Cells are still much less likely to be listed, and,
    in a bid to keep phone information close, many set their cells to private mode, to prevent number harvesting by call-display on the receiving end.

    But, the rise in two-factor authenication

An authority is a person who can tell you more about something than you really care to know.

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